


In Extremis

by Macx



Series: Imperfection Deviation [38]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: Extremis, Hurt/Comfort, physical change
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-22
Updated: 2008-08-22
Packaged: 2017-10-19 06:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/197942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macx/pseuds/Macx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark starts to look into Cybertronian protoform cell structures to improve his armor with the help of Ratchet. But something goes very, very wrong. Iron Man: Extremis reloaded. Set in my Imperfection 'verse</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Extremis

In Extremis. Latin. Meaning "in the furthest reaches" or "at the point of death", generally referring to grave or exceptional circumstances

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Author’s note: The Extremis in the Iron Man comic book series has fascinated me to no end. Iron Man: Extremis was the first comic book I bought after a very long time. I devoured it.  
Since I write movie fic and the movie is so very different from the comic in oh-so many ways I had a hard time coming up with a plausible explanation for Extremis in this ‘verse. It has almost the same functions, but with a twist. The IM fans who know about Extremis will see what I mean. Everyone else: just enjoy the story.  
This mixes comic book facts and characters with the movie!

Happy reading.

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One of the advantages of working with the Autobots and Project was the almost unlimited access to Sector Seven files, as well as all their experiments of the past decades. Tony Stark had first employed his skills as a hacker, then gotten the official passwords and codes from Banachek – which was like an open invitation into the sacred halls.

Tony had been in heaven.

His mind had worked overtime when he had started to browse through all the accumulated information. He had even taken everything upstairs to read when he had to leave the workshop for some mundane matter or other.

The work of one Dr. Ben Lays fascinated Tony the most. Lays had been among the first scientists to explore the inner workings of the Ice Man. He had taken sections off the frozen mechanoid and put them under an electro microscope. That had been in the fifties. Lays had worked tirelessly on exploring the true depths of the machine Sector Seven kept hidden and he had made astounding discoveries. While no one knew what a nanite was back then, Lays had filled several note books with details of what he perceived as tiny machines that rebuilt the section of the skin he had removed from Ice Man. While frozen, the nanites were dormant. When they were exposed to any kind of energy, be it solar, atomic, or otherwise, they would revive and try to repair the damage done.

Lays had died in 1988, still a scientist for Sector Seven even as he had already reached the amazing age of ninety-five. Tony would have wanted to meet the man because of his revolutionary discoveries and his infinite knowledge and theorizing on mechanoid life. Others had picked up on what Lays had started, but they hadn’t had the true grasp of genius.  
Tony had.

And he had something Lays hadn’t had: mechanoids who answered open questions.

Hot Rod had been more than willing to help. He wasn’t a scientist, so some questions Tony posed were impossible for him to answer. But he let Stark scan him, as well as answered questions as to why he hadn’t repaired his systems while hiding in Tony’s garage.

It was a matter of energy conservation.

Tony was even more fascinated. While the protoform was able to withstand immense heat or cold, contained enough material to create the camouflage shell, the self-repair for inner systems was put on hold. Hot Rod hadn’t been able to answer that; Ratchet had.

 

“We can survive in stasis-lock,” the medic told Tony.

“But you could also die.”

“It’s a risk we have to take. Our body shell is more resilient than it appears. In dire need we could shuck all disguise and revert back to protoform shape to insure further survival. It leaves us vulnerable and open, but the protoform is denser. It also varies from mech to mech.”

Tony studied the data, frowning a little. “These nanites are part of the protoform then?”

“They are what form the camouflage shell. Without them, we couldn’t do what we do in the amount of time we do it.”

Tony chuckled. “I see.”

 

The concept of these little repair units kept Tony awake at night testing all kinds of variations on that idea. The basic construction plan of the nanites wasn’t really all that different from what human scientists had thought about for decades, just more sophisticated. Tony had kept an eye on those developments and had made his own experiments, but he had never pursued it.

Maybe he should have.

At least he was now.

Using the nanite idea, Tony involved himself in that research, set Jarvis on several ideas for the AI to experiment with, and while he was also running his company, Tony was now more or less a permanent fixture in his workshop. Pepper had to move him out of there with a crowbar most of the time when he was supposed to be some place else. She couldn’t shut down his brain though.

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“Fuck!”

The expletive rang through the workshop, audible even through the hard beats of music, and Tony sucked at the cut in his hand. Blood still dripped onto the table and he glowered at the red drops.

It wasn’t the first time he had injured himself while working on the suit. It wouldn’t be last. It would definitely never be the last since he also injured himself while inside the armor.

Oh well.

Tony walked over to the sink and let water run over the cut, glaring at it. It stung, but it wasn’t deep, and it was bleeding sluggishly. An arm descended from the ceiling and held out the first aid kit.

“Thanks, Jarvis.”

The music dialed down.

“Whatever keeps you from exsanguination, Sir.”

Tony fumbled with the clasps and took out a piece of gauze, pressing it against the wound. He winced a little, but this was nothing compared to other injuries he had had before. This was truly no more than a paper cut. He wrapped some bandages around it, cleaned up and turned to look at the offensive piece of metal.

The new armor was turning out to be rather… difficult. While the basic model was still the same, Tony had started to tinker with the shielding, the flight control and some of the sensors. All proved to be rather entertaining for him, aside from the shielding. That was throwing up faults and keeping him on his toes with error messages. Now he had also cut himself on the thing.

Great.

Not his day.

Tony reached for his mug and grimaced at the lukewarm coffee. Still, he emptied the mug and placed it into the center of his work bench.

“Jarvis? Implement changes,” he ordered.

“Affirmative, Sir.”

Tony took the offending piece of metal and wiped off the droplets of blood clinging to it, then tossed the whole thing into the scrap metal bin. Jarvis would recycle it. The whole idea hadn’t worked in practice, only in theory. Back to the drawing board it was.

 

Seven hours later the first remodeling of the exterior of the armor was done. Nothing obvious had changed, but Tony knew that he had improved things greatly. He ran a hand over the smooth metal and smiled.

“Ready for a spin?” he asked softly.

The armor, of course, didn’t answer.

“Jarvis, we’re going for a ride,” Stark said out loud as he headed for where he kept the black undergarment of the suit.

“How exciting, Sir,” was the dry reply.

Tony chuckled.

 

Ten minutes after that a golden and red streak shot across the sky.

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Tony hadn’t really felt so good for a while now. Two days, if he had to put a time label on it. It had started with a sore throat and a sniffle. Now he was running a low-grade fever, he slept longer than he was used to, he was easily exhausted, and he ached all over.

Summer flu, Pepper had called it.

He called it a bother and something that shouldn’t have such crippling effects on his brain. He couldn’t concentrate, which was a menace to his experiments, and he forgot even more memos and emails than was usual. Pepper kept coming down into the workshop every hour to gently remind him of a signature needed or an okay he had to give. He finally told her to forge his signature and decide on what to buy, sell, or ignore herself. It had gotten him raised brows and something along the lines of ‘You don’t pay me enough for this’ before she had left.

When she came downstairs an hour later, Tony jerked out of a doze he hadn’t been aware of falling into.

He felt abysmal.

He felt like something had stepped on him and scraped the remains off at the nearest piece of rock.

His head was killing him, his joints ached, and even the thought of a new gadget or an upgrade to test couldn’t rouse him.

“Go to bed,” Pepper told him firmly. It sounded repetitive. Actually it was.

“I’m fine,” he muttered.

“You’re not and you’re just too stubborn to confess you’re feeling like crap.”

Tony raised an eyebrow. Even that hurt. “Harsh words, Ms. Potts.”

“It seems you don’t understand subtle any more.”

Pepper was glaring at him and it was a rather angry glare. Very impressive, too. Tony smiled and turned back to the computer screen where a model of the Ghost-2 was currently put through the virtual wringer. So far it was handling just fine.

“Go. To. Bed.”

“Coming with me?” he teased.

Her eyes flashed fire at him. “In your dreams.”

“There’s always room for you in my dreams.”

Again he turned back to the screen.

The hard clicks of Pepper’s heels announced her retreat, but Tony could almost feel the look she had given him.

He ignored her. He had a personal deadline to meet and he would meet it. A flu couldn’t stop him; it never had in the past.

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Pepper flopped down on the couch in the living room and sighed deeply. Her eyes were drawn to the peaceful vista outside. Nothing but sun and blue skies. Perfect weather.

She took out her cell phone and pushed a button.

“Hello, Pepper,” Hot Rod’s voice greeted her.

“He’s still working, right?”

“Of course. You know he would be.”

Another sigh. “He’s sick, Hot Rod. He should be relaxing.”

“I think Tony’s definition of ‘relaxation’ is work.”

“Hasn’t taken you very long to figure that out.”

“It’s not exactly hard.”

“True.”

“Jarvis and I are keeping an eye on him,” Hot Rod reassured her.

“I know you will and it’s good to know, but he needs rest. He’s doing too much at the moment. The company, Iron Man, the Ghost-2… and whatever else he’s fiddling around with.”

Hot Rod chuckled. “I doubt it’s the first time Tony is multi-tasking under adverse conditions.”

Pepper grimaced. She had no idea what kept the man running, but Tony Stark had given speeches while drunk, had astounded audiences with his eloquent ways, had charmed heads of state, and had survived getting shot at, blown up and crashing – only to sit in a board meeting as if nothing had ever happened. Thankfully the alcohol consumption had lessened. Tony was mostly clean of that vice. He had turned to coffee instead.

“Maybe I’m just a worry wart,” Pepper muttered.

“You’re one of his few true friends,” Hot Rod told her. “You have the right to worry. By the way, he has fallen asleep.”

“He has? That’s new.”

“Well, he’s dozing off,” the mech corrected. “He’ll be asleep soon. His vital functions are normal for a human.”

“A human with an arc reactor in his chest?” she asked wryly.

“Yes. The reactor isn’t influencing his physical functions in a negative way.”

Pepper was silent for a moment, eyes on the sky outside again. “Keep an eye on him,” she finally only said.

“You know we will.”

She put the Blackberry away and remained on the couch a while longer, enjoying the silence of the perfectly climate controlled house. Jarvis was monitoring, she knew, and should she address him he would answer. There was nothing to talk about, though.

Finally Pepper rose and left.

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Tony had woken with a headache this morning, but the fever was gone and he hadn’t had the queasy stomach any more. If at all, he felt hungry. His breakfast had consisted of a lot of coffee and some hastily burned toast. He would have Pepper get him something real after the board meeting.  
He grimaced at the thought. One of his favorite past times.

The achy feeling had turned into a constant dull beat and Tony felt a bit nauseous by the time Happy dropped him off at Stark Tower. He rubbed his temples.

“Are you okay, sir?” Happy asked.

“Fine. Headache. Nothing serious.”

The ache had turned into a slight pressure inside his head and he sighed silently. Just what he needed. He'd get some aspirin later. For now he had heads to bash and people to introduce, and knowing his staff they would waylay him to get papers signed on the way in and out of the meeting room.

Stark got out of the Rolls and straightened his suit jacket. The whole suit was impeccably tailored and ridiculously expensive, all in black, and he wore it like a shield.. He pushed his sun glasses up his nose and nodded at the security guard who held the door open for him.

Time to start being the industrialist for a few hours.

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Five hours later Tony Stark walked out of the board meeting, trying to look more awake than he actually was. The meeting had been dull, as not otherwise expected, with the usual posturing, arguing, mildly venomous barbs, and Tony’s cutting remarks that if this was a kindergarten party, he would call for some clowns to lighten up the mood.

Tony finally decided to confront the bickering bunch with the hard facts of life: weapons contracts were a thing of the past. He still researched material for the military, but that was solely connected to Project and the Autobots. It paid very well. The new branch of Stark Industries, medical equipment, computers and cell phones, was running pretty good.

“It’s not the same money as weapons,” Carl Summers argued.

“No, it isn’t,” Tony agreed amiably. “It’s no longer blood money.”

“You conscience in all honors,” he shot back. “But we’re losing stock! The stockholders aren’t happy.”

“You know what we’re really doing, gentlemen,” Tony said, voice hard and unyielding. “We’re building a future. We’re involved in one of the biggest secrets the world has ever known. What we manufacture is something only we have access to.”

They all knew about the Cybertronian tech and they knew where the money came from. It didn’t stop the hunger for more money, though.

“This is still my company, gentlemen.”

And he’d make damn sure it would remain his company, even if he had to sell his soul to Banachek.

“And this is the course it’s going to take. Any of you who have a problem with that, it’s very easy to write a resignation. My email is always open.”

Tony rose.

“That would be all, I believe.”

And he left.

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Stark Industries’ stock had risen in the past few weeks. Everything was quiet on the political front and Tony was able to work on what was really important right now.

It was throughout his research into Sector Seven’s secret files that Stark stumbled across the name of Dr. Maya Hansen. The woman was a medical designer and her work had already received great recognition. Tony browsed journals and articles, found dozens of references on the Net and he hacked into files he shouldn’t have access to at all – or even known about. It was how he came across the Super-Soldier program. He had heard of it before.

Hansen had taken the failed program from the mid-forties and pushed it to the next level, but as her research failed to bring any success and promised no immediate results, she was finally shut down. With it, her project had been shut away as well.

She had called it Extremis.

Tony was fascinated as he went through the research files.

“Extremis is a bio-electronics package, fitted into a few billion graphic nanotubes and suspended in a carrier fluid,” she had written in the documentation of her experiments. “It hacks the body’s repair center, the part of the brain that keeps a complete blueprint of the human body. When we’re injured we refer to that area of the brain in order to heal properly. Extremis rewrites the repair center. In the first stage of execution, the normal human blueprint is rewritten into the Extremis blueprint.”

Tony wondered how she could accomplish that. How did one tell Extremis what the blueprint was? What was normal and what not? How could the bio-engineered tech virus know? Medical science today had come so far, but this was beyond his understanding.

“The brain is being told that the body is wrong,” he read on. “The process was never tested on human subjects due to the instability of the nanotubes.”

Tony snorted. Instability my ass, he thought.

Just looking at the tech specs had him wincing. Hansen had a medical background, but she was missing the engineering knowledge necessary to make the electronic parts work. That and the missing continued funding.

Tony saw it. In every detail. And it was beautiful. In an eerie way, of course. It was highly dangerous and no one in his right mind would voluntarily undergo such an extreme, but no one had ever called Tony sane. ‘Erratic’, yes, but sane?

He grinned.

“Jarvis, download all files on the Extremis and Dr. Maya Hansen’s other work.”

“Very well, sir. May I ask what you’re planning?”

“Finish what she started.”

Jarvis was silent for a moment. “Do you think it wise, sir?”

“I think it’s interesting and warrants further research. She was on to something, Jarvis. And I know that the Extremis has potential.”

Because if he reprogrammed the Extremis to his needs, he might solve several problems that had been bugging him for months. The reaction time of the suit was inadequate. He still felt like a lumbering hunk of metal, like the Mark I had been. Tony wanted a smoother handling, the feeling that the armor was just a second skin. He needed maneuverability and endurance, and if he wired the Extremis into the suit to act like a neural transmitter… it might work. It could rewrite the human body – in theory – so it should be able to rewrite the suit, too.

“Done, sir,” Jarvis announced.

Tony smiled. He loved a challenge and this was truly one.

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The latest test flights had gone smoothly. The weapons testing had been perfect. The fact that if a weapon was strong enough and the impact was hard enough could still permanently damage the armor sat heavily with Tony. That hadn’t been the plan. He had hoped to trigger the P-Cells, as he called them, into repairing any damage done.

The Protoform Cells were nanites constructed with Cybertron technology. They were a derivation off the tiny cell structures in the Autobots’ skin that repaired their damage, given enough energon and time. Tony had spent weeks at the project, ignoring everything else, except when Pepper hit him with a verbal mallet and had him attend meetings and PR stuff. He hated those. All tests in the lab had gone perfectly on small examples of armor. Damage was always repaired.

It didn’t work on the real life model.

Tony was frustrated and his moods varied. Had he still been drinking, he would have fallen into bed, if he found it, intoxicated every single night. So he just snarled and snapped and bitched, and drank excessive amounts of coffee.

“Jarvis?” he snapped. “What’s taking so long?”

“All computations show no error, sir,” Jarvis replied dutifully. “The P-Cells are working perfectly.”

“They are not!” Tony replied sharply. “The armor remains damaged. There’s no sign of any kind of repair. It should work!”

Tony ran a hand through his already tousled hair, smearing grease and oil everywhere.

It should work.

It should do what it was supposed to.

The P-Cells did everything they had been programmed to do… until he applied them to his armor and then… nothing. Not even a beep!

Tony sat down at his workstation again and called up every schematic, then transferred them to the holographic display table.

“We’ll start again,” he ground out.

On a whim he called up Extremis on the second monitor. Maybe he could mesh it all somehow, make it work as a hybrid form.

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It took Tony another three days of cursing and next to no sleep – he still attended the charity events, meetings and business deals necessary to keep the company afloat and placate some of the stakeholders, which Pepper insisted he had to go to -- to finally get the P-Cells to behave as he had planned them to. At least for now and at least until something else went wrong somehow.

No, don’t think like that, he growled at himself.

Pepper had declared him a lost cause and the few visits by Rhodey had been accompanied by head-shaking and comments like ‘you’re crazy’ and ‘I always knew you’d work yourself to death’. Hot Rod was his silent, watchful self. The mech rarely initiated conversations when Tony was working. It was like he knew and respected the ‘haze’ his friend was in and Tony appreciated it.

Stark had teleconferenced board meetings, had appeared at five out of ten charity events, which was a record anyway, and he had kept up with his company’s new direction.

It didn’t help that part of his mind was simultaneously checking and rechecking specs of the Ghost-2 and coming up with ideas for that as well. Sometimes he wished there was an off-switch.

As it was… there was none. And his mind was hard to tame. Especially since Extremis still occupied his thoughts quite dominantly. Simulations had shown that there was no way at all to incorporate Extremis into the armor itself. It just didn’t work that way. So a new idea crossed his mind: incorporate Extremis into the user; himself.

It was highly dangerous. It was completely radical. It could kill him.

Tony smiled darkly and touched the arc reactor glowing in his chest. A lot of things had nearly killed him, but he had survived.

“Jarvis, run a probability on the injection of Extremis into a human body.”

There was a long second of silence. “Sir?”

“You heard me.”

“Are you seriously considering injecting Extremis into your system?” the AI queried.

“Do it, Jarvis. That’s an order.”

“Yes, Sir,” came the almost snappish reply.

“Tony?” Hot Rod asked.

He sighed. “What?”

“Are you? Thinking about injecting Extremis into yourself?” the mech added.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s dangerous. You could kill yourself.”

“Or I could give myself the edge I need. I’m like a flying tank, Roddy. My fights tell me my weak spots and those are maneuverability, speed and the weight of the armor. It’s impossible to make the circuits even smaller and while the P-Cells help with the repair, I’m still vulnerable.”

“If you kill yourself in the lab because of an experiment that would end all theorizing about fights,” Hot Rod pointed out.

He smiled darkly. “It would, wouldn’t it?”

With that Tony turned to the model Jarvis was constructing, watching the simulated injection of the Extremis into a human model. He knew his chances were slim if he used Dr. Hansen’s original version, but maybe, just maybe he could get the virus to work as he wanted it to. He didn’t need superpowers. He didn’t need to throw flames or ooze acid. He needed maneuverability and speed. The armor would fly, not him. He needed a better interface and that interface was Extremis.

Tony set to work on altering the command codes and running more simulations.

 

Hot Rod watched his human charge, worry coursing through him. Tony was an intense man, someone willing to risk himself, his health and even his sanity, to accomplish that he wanted. He was a risk-taker. Hot Rod knew the breed; he was a risk-taker himself. But he had never gambled on his physical health, had never wanted to upgrade with untested software. Hot Rod had also never thought of himself as lowly as Tony did. He had realized in the time he had spent with the man that Tony Stark’s opinion of himself differed from that of others.

Tony was ready to risk it all now.

And Hot Rod wondered if there was anything he could do to stop him.

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Taking the upgraded armor out for a spin was Tony’s way to relax. Flight was a freedom he had never felt before. He had never flown anything himself, never been a co-pilot, but the armor… being the pilot and the plane in one, it was more than an adrenaline rush. It was everything for him.

Today wasn’t just for fun, thought. He wanted to test the P-Cells, this time under realistic battle conditions. While he would have liked nothing more than to go into a war zone and show those terrorists what he thought of them using his weapons, Tony had set up his own little playground over at Nellis. Bowman had just shrugged and shaken his head at the request, but he hadn’t tried to argue against it. And since the Autobots were using Nellis as their link to their own base, having Iron Man test new armor was not out of the ordinary, really.

The flight took him an hour, but only because he dawdled. He activated his anti-radar shield and took the armor for an atmospheric spin. Above the clouds, without anyone watching him, Tony flew lazy arcs, tight turns and loops, and he laughed at the exhilaration he felt.

Jarvis luckily didn’t call him on that. The AI was silent, just monitoring.

When he finally touched down in his private little test zone, Tony was grinning like an idiot. No one could understand what it felt like. This was only for him.

“Jarvis, fire up the P-Cells.”

“Very well, sir.”

The HUD lit up with new data and Tony found the upgrade working smoothly with the already existing programs. The P-Cells wouldn’t act unless required to. They weren’t just a thin layer of cells on the armor; they had been integrated into the molecularly bonded shielding, were part of the armor.

“Now let’s see what we can do…”

Tony activated the small barrage of weapons he had installed in this out of the way location and immediately he had warnings coming in. He had been marked and the weapons system was ready to fire.

He grinned.

This would be fun.

Launching into the sky, he was immediately tracked and targeted.

Duck. Left. Right.

Fire.

Evade.

Small hit to the left shoulder.

Cutting it close to the ground.

Missile away, following him. Tight turn.

Left-right-left, repulsor blast.

The missile exploded in a small bloom of fire.

But Tony didn’t have time to feel triumphant. The next battery of weapons fire headed his way and this time he met it head on. He wanted to test the armor’s capabilities while under fire.

And fire there was.

Tony felt it batter against the outer armor, he saw the warnings flash up on the HUD, and he gritted his teeth as a missile strike sent him crashing into the ground. He got up, deactivating the program, and looked at the charred skin on his side. The golden and red coloring had been burned and there was a gash.

Suddenly something seemed to lance through him, cutting his chest apart. He gasped, his knees giving way. The very ground seemed to grow wavy and twisted around him. His mind buzzed with something akin to whispers.

The world around him went black.

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Eleven minutes had passed.

Tony lay on the ground, still completely in his armor, gazing almost stupidly at the HUD display. There were no more warnings about amour breaches.

The P-Cells had worked.

And they had almost depleted the arc reactor.

Well, shit.

Tony sat up with a groan and his hand brushed over the chest plate where the arc reactor glowed dimly. The HUD information told him that while it was reloading, it was only at thirty percent.  
What the hell was going on with the P-Cells? The last simulations hadn’t shown any kind of severe power depletion. The P-Cells didn’t need all that much energy! He had modeled them after the Autobots’ version, which was running on very low power unless a reconstruction was needed, and even then they wouldn’t draw almost all available power.

Back to the drawing board.

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Tony gulped down some aspirin and sighed, closing his eyes. Damn this headache and damn his aching body as well! The pain had subsided a bit because of the medication, but it was still there. He had managed to ignore most of it and when he concentrated on his work he felt marginally better.

He was used to bruises and even bullet wounds, but this was more like the remnants of the flu. His joints were protesting most movement and he felt tired.

It didn’t help when Pepper came down into the workshop, scowling at him at his obvious state of pain and no sleep, and handed him a cell phone.

“Banachek,” she only said.

Tony was immediately alert. He took the phone and smiled as he greeted Tom Banachek.

“To what do I owe the honor?”

He winked at Pepper and she scowled more, pointedly looking at the charred armor and his ruffled looks. Tony ignored the non-verbal criticism because what he heard on the cell was the best news in weeks.

“You better reserve a parking space,” he joked. “I’ll be there yesterday.”

“Good news?” Pepper asked neutrally.

“The best. Official invite to the Autobot base.”

“How nice. You plan on a shower and sleep first?”

“Shower only. I can sleep on the way.”

Pepper’s lips were pressed into a fine line, her eyes reflecting the eye-roll she wasn’t showing.

“Roddy, fire up your engine. We’re going to visit your friends,” Tony called as he headed for the stairs to make good of the shower promise.

And then he was out of ear shot.

 

Pepper looked at the obvious signs of Tony’s armor tests, then glanced at Hot Rod.

“How bad was it this time?”

“It seems the P-Cells are working,” Hot Rod replied. “But they deplete the arc reactor. Aside from that, I’m worried about Tony, Pepper. He hasn’t slept properly and I think he’s still fighting off flu symptoms.”

“It takes more than the common flu to keep him down, Hot Rod.”

“I noticed,” came the wry answer.

“And it won’t do any good mother-henning either,” Pepper went on with a knowing air. “He’ll just fight it all harder.”

“That I noticed, too.”

“So just keep an eye on him down here. I’ll keep him from running into doors and lamp posts in the real world.”

Hot Rod chuckled. “It’s a deal.”

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Tony was dizzy and felt like he was packed in wool. His head seemed to be three sizes too large and his body didn't really belong to him. Only with an immense effort was it possible for him to coordinate his movements and he was afraid that he would lose all control the next step. This was only getting worse, not better.

He wouldn’t succumb to another round of the flu. It had had its chance and he didn’t need it. With the flu he wouldn’t be able to go into space and he would do almost all to be on board the Ghost-2.

He felt a little better after the shower and he improved on the way back down into the garage where Hot Rod was waiting. Pepper was nowhere to be seen, but that had been expected.

“Ready?” Tony asked.

The driver’s door opened. “Ready.”

“Then let’s go.”

 

He fell asleep fifteen minutes later and Hot Rod employed his holographic projection unit, replicating the whole interior and adding a driver.

Tony needed some rest.

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Watching Tony Stark work was… not exactly poetry in motion, but it was something special. Ex-Army Ranger Will Lennox had found that just sitting in the lab and watching the man was… amazing. Having him work together with Sam was downright eerie sometimes. Both men could confuse even a seasoned mech like Ratchet, or Ironhide, and Will had more than once remarked about that to his partner. Ironhide readily confessed that Stark was a unique person. Ratchet would add that the man was also highly erratic.

Tony worked without blueprints. He would draw schematics, he would work with the holographic sketching table, but the main work was done inside his very agile mind. Only if a design worked would he draw the schematics for everyone to access and read over. The rest was on his own personal ‘hard drive’.

With Sam, matters were more physical because he used the computer units in the lab, but he rarely typed nowadays. He was so familiar with the tech around him, he accessed it with his mind. At first it had creeped out those who hadn’t seen the young engineer work his ‘magic’. Will himself had had to get used to a screen suddenly coming to life and strings of code appearing on it. Now it was almost normal.

Together the two men had started to redesign the Ghost-2 in a manner no one else would have been able to.

Ratchet had received a file from Stark Industries, Tony Stark personally, about two weeks earlier. It had contained the totally reworked plans of the Ghost-2, a set of modifications, several tests run on said modifications on a model created solely in cyberspace, as well as several notes on the performance of a small scale model Stark had built and tested. There were pages of footnotes relating to changes that needed to be made should the cargo lifted to the Ark exceed the combined weight of Optimus Prime and Ironhide, as well as possible emergency plans should the Ghost-2 bring back more cargo than it had lifted into space.  
Ratchet had just stared at the files and shook his head.

“This is amazing,” he had commented when he had shown everything to Ironhide and Optimus Prime.  
“Especially considering that no one asked him to do it,” Prime had agreed.

No one really had. Tony had simply done it. Spare time, he had claimed.

Will knew better. Tony Stark simply wasn’t a man to ignore a challenge and the Ghost-2 had proven to be one.

 

“This is me being helpful!” the industrialist genius argued. “Why is everyone immediately suspicious?”

“Maybe because you’ve tried every trick in the book to get in on the next mission,” Will replied amiably.

“Almost every trick,” came the reply. Tony grinned at him over the video-conference link. “I still have some really good aces up my sleeves.”

“Like the reworked Ghost-2 model?”

“I had some time on my hands,” was the dismissive reply, but there was no missing the excited glint in the dark eyes.

“Sure, Tony.”

How a man who was the CEO of an international company, who had just turned said company around and had proven it worked, still had time for all Tony did… it was beyond Will.

But he had that time. Probably less sleep, too. And Tony Stark was trying to help them with the second mission. Sure, he wanted in on it, but he was offering payment.

 

Sam and the other engineers had checked the plans, had tweaked them some more, had sent them back – and had received an email an hour after sending Tony their changes that, while polite, told them that their changes were crap and would surely crash the ship.

So Katie and Finch had set out to prove their ideas were viable. The model had behaved wonderfully until it had blown apart because of a calculation error.

Stark had come to the base immediately after his ‘invitation’ and ever since he and Sam hadn’t really left the lab. Will had joined them as a spectator and sometimes as an assistant. From Prime he knew that Tony was now officially part of the mission and would be aboard the Ghost-2. Stark was also funding some of the research and construction with his own money. He was truly paying for this ticket to the Moon. In work and in cash. Banachek wasn’t openly happy about it, but he wasn’t opposing it either.

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Days should consist of forty-eight hours. At least.

Tony scrubbed a hand over his face, feeling tired, exhausted. He couldn’t remember a decent night of sleep. His mind was occupied with the P-Cells, Extremis, the Ghost-2, and sometimes even his company. He almost laughed. And now, just before he had left Nevada because Pepper had forcibly reminded him five times that he had a meeting with some idiot who only wanted to deal with the CEO of a company and never with a representative, Banachek had reminded him to get back to him on his proposal for a new board member of Stark Industries. Banachek knew that one of the old guys was leaving, that several were about to leave in the future, and he wanted someone there who was connected to Project and the Autobots.

Stark downed the glass of lemon water and grimaced. He had removed almost all of the alcoholic drinks from the private jet and had kicked the strippers off, too. Well, the normal cabin crew still remained. It felt like a serious company jet now; eerie.

Calling up the file of the person in question, Tony tried to concentrate. John Keller, former Secretary of Defense, now working for Project. He was a good choice for SI, but Tony wasn’t all that sure yet how much of SI he wanted to hand over to Banachek to control. So far he had kept it all separate. If he wanted to pour more of himself into other projects, into Cybertronian research and into Iron Man, he had to make a few choices.

Tony’s cell phone rang and he looked at the display. Pepper.

“Yes, mom?” he asked, sounding bored.

“Mr. Gregory called. He cancelled the appointment,” Pepper could be heard.

“Son of a bitch. He did that the last time, too!”

“Shall I take him off the customer list?”

“Put him on the wait list for my representative to meet with him,” Tony ground out. “He got a second chance. I’m not desperate for his money.”

“Five million?” Pepper reminded him.

“Five million reasons not to let him play me.” He snapped the phone shut, then pressed the intercom button. “Harry, turn around. We’re going home.”

“Yes, Mr. Stark,” the pilot answered.

The plane changed course and Tony gestured at the buxom blonde waiting on him to get him a whiskey. She smiled brilliantly, professionally, did her little ‘Yes, Mr. Stark, immediately’ routine and Tony turned to the window.

Sometimes it sucked to be him.

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The jet touched down an hour later and Tony had to smile as he discovered Happy waiting for him.

“Hot Rod busy?” he asked as he got into the Rolls.

The mech had returned on his own to the mansion after Tony had gone to Nellis to board his private jet for the appointment with Gregory.

“He suggested I pick you up to let you sleep on our way back,” Happy answered.

“Baby-sitter,” Tony muttered, but he had to smile.

The Rolls pulled away from the airfield and out onto the road. Tony felt the exhaustion settle more heavily and he closed his eyes.

“Wake me,” he only said.

“Of course, Sir.”

The hum of the Rolls’ engine lulled him into sleep.

 

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Tony Stark was no one who gave up easily, but he recognized his limits when they were shoved into his face again and again. He was no medical designer; he was an engineer. He understood the engineering side of Extremis, but the medical side was a mystery to him. All he knew was what Jarvis had run for him a hundred times in simulation: the Extremis was untested on live subjects and it was deadly in every simulation. His own additions to the program had changed nothing. It was what finally convinced him he needed to contact the woman who had developed Extremis.

So he looked up Dr. Maya Hansen.

Hansen had been working for different companies in the past five years, but she had never kept the job for long. Tony found her in a privately owned genetic research lab near San Francisco.  
It didn’t take her long to accept his invitation. It took her a bit longer to accept his offer to fund the renewed Extremis research.

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“Why?” Hansen asked.

She was a slender woman, dark-haired, pale-faced, and her hair bound tightly back. She was dressed in unflattering clothes, wore next to no make-up, and she had the red-rimmed eyes of a scientist who worked more than she slept. Tony kept wondering if they had ever met before. Maybe at a conference. He might have seen her in the crowd or at a seminar. Maybe he had even tried to chat her up. One never knew. He had a long line of women in his past that he had satisfied in one way or another.

He suppressed a dark smile. That long line had been cut off quite rudely a while back. The arc reactor made sure that company of either sex was very select.

“Extremis interests me,” he now answered.

“It interests you?” She laughed wryly. “A lot of things are interesting, Mr. Stark. Movies, books, cars… this is a bio-engineered nano-virus.”

“I’ll fund your research, Dr. Hansen,” Tony said evenly. “You get full access to Stark Labs in LA. You’ll have your very own lab, privacy, all you ever wanted. You provide me with what I want. That’s the deal. Don’t tell me you haven’t done the same work over the years for other people?” There was a fine smile around his lips.

She grimaced. “What are you? Santa Claus? Why the gracious offer? What specifications are we talking about?”

Tony leaned back, hands folded. “That you’ll see when I have your answer.”

“The Extremis was a failure. I tried all possibilities, and it never worked. You think I can whip up some magic and make it work now? Mr. Stark, funding was never the problem.”

“I think it was. No money, no research, no brilliant new ideas. Talking about brilliant new ideas…”

Tony took a sheet of paper out of his case. He handed it to her and watched her every twitch. Hansen didn’t try to hide her reactions.

“Who wrote this?” she demanded.

“I did.”

“You? But…”

“I’m an engineer, Dr. Hansen. Your work interested me. From an engineering point of view I did what was possible. I can’t run medical simulations, though. I’m no medical designer, so I reached my own limits. You see, we can work together and we can finish it.”

“The Super-Soldier Program was discontinued, Mr. Stark. I doubt the government or SHIELD would have any further interest in it.”

“This is my own interest. The funds are my own.”

Her eyes narrowed, then she suddenly smiled. “Now I remember. It’s been a while I rarely keep up with the news, but I think I remember one of your little escapades… Iron Mman, right?”

Tony smiled, his eyes reflecting no humor, though. “Are you in, Dr. Hansen?” he asked without answering her question.

She met his stony gaze, visibly torn between walking away and throwing herself into this one hundred and ten percent.

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She had said yes in the end, too eager to continue the work she had never been able to finish. Tony knew he would get her. She was a scientist. She was passionate about this. She had seen failure and she wanted to prove it could work.

And Tony wanted to see it work, too. For a different reason. This could and hopefully would give him what he needed. Hansen would not only work with her old specs, but also with the Cybertronian technology Stark Industries controlled. Tony’s ideas were very specific. He needed a better interface for the suit. He needed it to react with his neural impulses as if the armor was just another limb. He had to be more maneuverable, the armor had to be lighter, he had to slim it down while not losing integrity or shielding capabilities. The P-Cells would took care of repairs, though he still had to handle the energy problem.

Extremis was the answer to so many problems – if Maya Hansen could make it work.

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The past month had been rather… slow, Hot Rod decided. Tony had gone back to regular tinkering with the suit, little upgrades here or there, and perfecting the P-Cells. That they still required so much power was a continuing problem.

The Extremis project was progressing. Tony spent a lot of time talking to Dr. Hansen or swinging by the lab to see what was happening progress-wise. Since he always took the Audi, Hot Rod was there to keep an eye on matters. He usually eavesdropped on conversations and now and then hacked into the computer to look at Hansen’s work. He had next to no understanding of bio-tech; Ratchet would know more about this. But Tony was his charge and he wanted to make sure he wouldn’t just kill himself with Extremis.

John Keller had come into the picture a week ago. Tony had finally met the former SecDef in person and Hot Rod had been curious as to the future developments. He had been very surprised when Tony had told him, almost casually, that Keller would be made chairman of the board in the coming months. SI’s board would probably go through an uproar, but Keller could handle it. And he could handle SI. He would be Tony’s ally, the CEO’s ally, and he needed that kind of support. While the board knew about the Cybertronians, petty day-to-day quarrels sometimes interfered with rational thinking. Keller would deal with it, giving Tony the space needed for his own projects – not just Iron Man, but reeling in contracts with other companies.

“That was quick,” the mech remarked as Tony stirred his coffee. He was sitting on the floor, watching a holographic image lazily turn in the middle of the room. It was a complicated formula of something or other.

“Yeah. Had to finally make a choice. Banachek’s been bugging me for months.”

“That usually leads to more stubbornness from you.”

Tony chuckled. “Know me so well?”

“There is a certain pattern.”

He grinned and refilled the coffee mug from his thermos. The code in the hologram changed and formed what looked like a tiny machine.

“You’re still thinking about Extremis?” Hot Rod wanted to know.

“I never stopped.”

“Would you really inject it?”

“In its current form? No. Too dangerous. Later, with my specifications present? Maybe.”

“It would still not be tested.”

“I know.”

“Tony… why?”

“Because it’s the only way.”

Hot Rod gave a little whirring sigh. “To kill yourself even faster?”

Dark brows rose. “I’m not trying to kill myself, never have.”

“Your track record begs to differ.”

Tony played with the mug. “It’s what I have to do, Roddy.”

“Kill yourself?”

“Make things right.”

Hot Rod was silent for a moment. “Your revenge turned into redemption?”

He laughed softly. “In a way. It’s how I can look at myself every morning in the mirror. I killed people, Roddy. Because of what I sold.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yeah. Sure. I only built the weapons, I didn’t use them, right? The old excuse.” Tony looked away. “I killed those people, Roddy. I am that killer. I built the weapons. I perfected the killing machines. Iron Man is a way to redeem myself in my own eyes.”

“Does it help?” Hot Rod wanted to know.

Tony laughed humorlessly. “You really have to ask?”

“Considering your sometimes self-destructive behavior, no,” came the reply.

“Thanks, pal. You’re a real help.”

Hot Rod shifted a little on his shocks, chuckling. “You’re welcome.”

“Jarvis, show me the latest batch Dr. Hansen sent me,” Tony ordered.

Jarvis complied and a faintly blue and yellow schematic appeared. Tony studied it silent, frowning now and then. He was still sitting on the ground.

“Jarvis, get me the files from last week as comparison.”

“Very well, sir.”

The next image was green.

“Something wrong?” Hot Rod asked.

“I don’t know yet.” Stark got up. “I need to check some things out.”

And with that he went back to the computer work station.

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Tony had spent some more time with Stark Industries lately. He attended all meetings, returned calls, signed papers, and generally had Pepper bordering on a heart attack from disbelief. It was nice to know he could still fluster her.

“Are you sure you’re feeling all right?” she asked one evening as he went through the latest contracts she had to get ready by tomorrow morning.

“Never been better.”

Delicate brows drew down, but she didn’t comment, just pushed the signed contracts into a folder.

Tony loosened his tie and took another swig from the soda can he had opened a minute ago.

“John Keller will start tomorrow,” Pepper suddenly remarked.

“I know.”

“It might explain your tame mood.”

“Tame?” Tony chuckled. “I’ve never been called that before.”

“Would you prefer mellowed?”

“Now you’re insulting, Pepper.”

She smiled and went back to looking through the papers.

An hour later they were done and she walked back outside. It was already dark, close to midnight, and she felt tired. Tony had shown her out and the expression in his face, the relaxation, had told her that something was changing inside him. It had started with Iron Man and it was still continuing. It was a good change; she liked it.

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Tony Stark wasn’t stupid, but apparently Maya Hansen thought so. She had shown him test results and discussed possible ways of reprogramming with him. She had dutifully kept him updated on matters. She had even shown up early and worked late. Still, something about the meetings as matters progressed didn’t sit well with Tony.

So he had Jarvis hack the lab’s computer and tag her emails, her phone calls, and he even had him follow her credit card trail.

“Aren’t you a bit paranoid, sir?” the AI asked.

“A healthy paranoia is never wrong. It got me as far as I am now.”

Jarvis didn’t answer that statement, but Tony could almost hear the criticism.

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It didn’t take Tony long to hack into Maya’s accounts, her credit card statements, her phone records, and so much more. His brows rose as he read a name he had heard before.

Fujikawa.

He knew Fujikawa Enterprises. They had tried to take over the US market before, but had failed when Stark Industries had pushed back. Fujikawa was not really into bio-tech, but the man wouldn’t be as rich as he was now if he ignored new markets. If Maya had offered him something, like her research, which had been paid by SI, he would jump on it – even if he didn’t know what to do with it for now.

“Bitch,” Tony muttered as he ran an expert eye over the saved files on Maya’s server.

She had put up fake files, had transferred a lot of data on external drives, and because she was the only one working on the Extremis, no one had taken much notice. He had given her the privacy and the space and the resources, and she had gone behind his back for money. Tony almost laughed out loud. Hansen hadn’t even bargained with him. She had jumped on the chance to do this, and then sold him out.

It was time to talk to the woman.

Tony rose and grabbed his car keys. Hot Rod opened the door before he was even at the car. Stark smiled grimly, slid into the seat, and started the engine.

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“Why would she sell you out?” Hot Rod asked.

“Are you that naïve by nature?” Tony asked sarcastically. “Money.”

“I’m not naïve, Tony, just surprised. You offered her what she wanted to complete her pet project. It would be stupid to sell you out.”

“No one ever said humanity is the most logical or rational of life forms.”

“Sorry. My bad. I should have drawn my conclusion from you,” came the equally sarcastic reply.

Tony grinned. “Hansen is a greedy bitch, Roddy. She wanted my help in perfecting the Extremis and then the money of the highest bidder. She might not have waited for me to offer the funds, but she was ready to jump on it. If Fujikawa had been in my place, she might have offered the prototype to Stark Industries.”

“Too bad.”

He burst out laughing. “That’s a way of putting it.”

“Shouldn’t you call the police? It’s industrial espionage, right?”

“This is my problem, Hot Rod. I'll handle it my way.”

Hot Rod hummed, displeased.

“And if anything goes wrong, I’ve got you, right?”

“Of course.” But Hot Rod didn’t sound too happy about it all.

Tony ignored the Autobot’s mood and headed toward the Stark Lab’s compound where he would most likely find Maya Hansen. He had given her a lot of privacy and she had stabbed him in the back.

Great way to work on his paranoia and trust problem.

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Maya Hansen didn’t feel like a traitor. She felt very little, except… completion. She had worked on Extremis for so long, had begged for funding, had searched for companies who understood what she was trying to do, and always, always it had ended in defeat. She had tried to convince people that her approach to a modified, functional Super-Soldier serum was the correct way. Those who had funded her had withdrawn when results had been either too slow or had thrown up more and more failures. In the end she had been forced to put everything on ice – until Tony Stark.

The industrialist wanted Extremis for himself, for the Iron Man project. His understanding of her work was phenomenal, much better and more detailed than anyone before. He knew what she wanted to do, he knew that it had never been tested, and he provided the engineering angle, as well as the money. It had been the perfect partnership.

Maya had betrayed Stark’s trust and a small part of her cringed at it, but a much larger had seen the money Fujikawa offered. It would enable her to go back into her field of expertise, medical design. She could work on a cure for cancer, maybe use parts of Extremis for that. There was so much potential! No one but her saw it. No one but her believed in it.

She would do everything for that belief, even sell out someone who had given her the best chance she'd had in the past ten years. Extremis as a Super-Soldier serum replacement might never work, but the basic idea was something that could be expanded upon. It was the future. It would be her future.

“Going somewhere?”

Maya flinched. The amiable tone of voice, the timbre, the teasing note… it was so typically Tony Stark. She turned around slowly and looked at the man. He was standing almost casually in the doorway except that there was nothing casual about his expression. The dark eyes were hard, the face reflecting danger.

Stark was a very attractive man and she had read a lot about him in the past. He was disgustingly rich, had the looks, the women, the connections. He had everything. He might have been the perfect employer, able to give her what she wanted, if it wasn’t for her dream. Stark would never go into medical research. He would never see her visions. Cancer research was as old as the sickness itself. There might never be a cure, or she would crack the code and heal the world. Cancer research was prestigious for companies, but it didn’t yield as much money as weapons contracts or computer software. It was the future, but only she seemed to know it.

“Mr. Stark. I didn’t know you’d come here…” Maya tried to play it cool.

“I wasn’t planning to either, but your little lies forced me to.”

“Lies? I never lied to you!”

“You told me Extremis doesn’t react well to the changes I asked you to make. You said it wouldn’t be ready for a few more weeks, that it needed to be completely reprogrammed again.” Stark walked closer, each step measured. “But you computer logs beg to differ.”

Maya felt something inside her freeze. The computer logs… he had hacked them. She just knew it. Stark was good at that.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

“You finished Extremis, Maya, and you already sold it to someone else. I’m rather disappointed,” Stark continued, sounding almost casual. “I gave you the chance to make something of it, but instead you wanted even more.”

His eyes fell on the carrier, still open, filled with the vials.

“You wanted more money. All you had to do was ask, you know?”

She almost laughed. “I wasn’t looking for a raise, Stark!”

“No, just for a quick buck. How much, Maya? Two million? Three? Whatever he’s paying you, it’s a pittance compared to what Extremis means, what it can do. I’m sorry you made this step.”

Tony got out his cell phone and as he flipped it open, Maya finally reacted. She knew she had to go, she had to get the vials to Fujikawa, and she couldn’t be arrested. This was her dream. Extremis was her ticket to all the money she had ever wanted for her dream.

She reached for the first thing she could find and lashed out at her employer. To Stark’s credit he was fast and he ducked the wireless keyboard coming at him.

Maya grabbed the injector gun and one of the lab cutters and rushed at him.  
He grabbed her hand with the cutter.

She pushed the injector into his abdomen.

Tony’s eyes widened briefly.

She squeezed the trigger.

The vial emptied into him with a soft hiss.

There was a horrible moment as time stood still, as she watched the disbelief in his eyes, then he staggered backward.

Maya had no time to lose. She had already lost an Extremis sample, but it had been necessary to insure her freedom.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

Tony crashed to his knees, the cell phone clattering to the ground. He was breathing hard, in pain, and suddenly he bent over with a cry, grabbing his stomach. The cry turned into a steady whimper crescending into a sudden scream, body spasmning.

She had to go.

Now.

Taking the carrier Maya Hansen fled the lab.

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Tony lay stunned, his world consisting only of the burning feeling in his stomach and his ever-narrowing field of vision. Each breath hurt, each muscle twitch was agony. Something was running through his body, along his veins, into his bones, and it more than hurt. It was agony. It was worse than the shrapnel. It was worse than Yinsen implanting the device to keep him alive. It was worse than anything he had ever felt before.

He wanted to scream again, but his body was paralyzed.

Tony gasped helplessly, tears forming in his eyes as they closed and refused to open.

All he felt was the burn. His heart stuttered, beat, stuttered, tried to beat again.

No, his brain cried. No, no, no! Not like this! There was so much he still needed to do!

Then even that last thought died.

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The call came in while Ratchet was going through the latest inventory list with Lieutenant DeMarco. The base had been rather quiet lately. Jazz and Arcee were at the Arctic station, helping with the reconfiguration of the Ghost-2 for the next mission. Knowing Barricade, he would be around there somewhere, too. Ironhide and Will were mostly at Nellis, working with Bowman on operational matters. Sam and Bumblebee had taken some time off. The young engineer had claimed vacation time, but he would be back this weekend. Ratchet had taken the peace and quiet to go over base matters, as had Optimus Prime.

Ratchet was surprised to note that the emergency caller was Hot Rod. The younger mech hadn’t been in much personal contact. He sent brief reports, but he rarely came here at all. His time was occupied by guarding Tony Stark – who was apparently more than a handful. Ratchet respected Stark as a scientist. The man’s brain was amazing and his thoughts never followed a normal pattern.

He opened a com line.

“Ratchet, this is Hot Rod,” the mech said, sounding a bit… stressed. “I need help at the following location.” There was a burst of coordinates. “Tony was attacked.”

“Attacked by what?” he asked, keeping his voice calm. Why wouldn’t Hot Rod call one of Tony’s associates?

“I don’t know. Ratchet, he’s… there’s some kind of metal on his skin and it’s growing!”

Ratchet was speechless. “Metal?”

“Yes. Ratchet, it has Allspark code on it.”

Ratchet froze for a full second, shock racing through his systems. “Hot Rod, repeat!” he ordered, voice firm. “Did you say Allspark code?”

“Yes. Something happened, Ratchet, and I think it’s connected to the Extremis project Tony has been working on. I need help immediately!”

“Understood. Keep him safe.”

Ratchet severed the connection and called up the fastest way he could think of: a flight from Nellis. Captain Bowman answered him on the second ring.

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Hot Rod had never felt so relieved than the moment he saw the Airforce helicopter land on the parking lot. Police had cordoned off the area, probably completely unaware of what was really going on. Lennox and Bowman hopped out of the helicopter, followed by someone Hot Rod had never met.

Lennox stopped and his eyes widened as he looked at what had by now become a cylindrical cocoon.

“Well, shit!” he breathed, then he gathered his wits. “Let’s get him aboard. Hot Rod, you need to drive back. We can’t airlift you.”

The R8 transformed. “On my way!” And he shot away.

Hot Rod kept his com lines open, getting updates on the position of the helicopter and any changes in Tony’s condition. Part of him reminded him that the probable cause was Dr. Hansen, but he couldn’t care less. Tony was his to guard and he had failed.

Still, he accessed the closest satellite and cast out an electronic net to alert him should the name of Dr. Maya Hansen appear somewhere.

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Optimus Prime was already waiting for the arrival of the helicopter, as were six of Epps’ men, and Epps himself. Ironhide stood at his side, twitchy, tense, expecting the worst. His guns were charged and he was ready to act should anything happen. He had come back from Nellis the moment Bowman and Lennox had taken off. As the helicopter door slid open, the men converged and helped unload the object. Prime’s optics widened as he took in the look of the metal and the carvings. Ratchet was already walking past him, advising how to get the cylinder into the base and his lab.

“Will?” Prime asked softly.

“I have no idea, Optimus. None at all,” the Ex-Army Ranger replied tightly. “Hot Rod is on the way and I bet he’s breaking every speed record. He has no idea what happened, but a lot of theories.”

Prime looked at his ally and friend, noting the tightness to the human’s features and the way he was rubbing over the permanent band of glyphs around his wrist.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine. Just… freaked. You should’ve seen the runes. I don’t know what they’re reacting to, but they did. Still are.”

He pushed back a long sleeve and showed Prime a rather tight assortment of ancient code, all indecipherable to him.

“Do you hurt?”

“No. I’m okay. It’s just… weird.” Will pushed down the sleeve again. “I’ll see what Ratchet finds out. I think he’ll also want to know about my reaction to this thing.”

Prime nodded. He followed the human, scanning Will briefly for any signs of trouble, but all he got was a tight smile from the man. He had felt it. Of course he felt it, he reminded himself. It was well-known how receptive the hybrid had become.

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Ratchet had run all kinds of scans and he had come up with… nothing. None of his instruments could penetrate the metal cocoon that, according to Hot Rod, contained Tony Stark. That it was the exact same dull bronze and burned gold color as the Allspark didn’t help settle the ill feeling the medic had. That there were runes apparently carved into the metal added another level of fear.

Will stood to one side of the examination table, brows drawn over unreadable brown eyes. The runes on his skin were reacting quite vividly to the presence of the cocoon and whatever it was that had turned Stark into… this… it was Cybertronian. At least in part.

Hot Rod was off to one side, blue optics alight with fear and worry, and he hadn’t left the lab for a single moment. Ratchet had been able to ban everyone but the guardian of Tony Stark. He understood Hot Rod’s worry. This had happened while he had been just been around the corner.

“Do you have access to these Extremis files Tony was working on?” Ratchet now asked.

“No, but Jarvis has, and I think I can convince him to let me copy them,” the younger mech replied.

“Do it. Whatever this is, it isn’t just Cybertronian.”

Will reached out and suddenly touched the metal shell before Ratchet could stop him. He withdrew his hand with a hiss.

“Will?”

“Nothing. It’s… just not a good feeling. Like being zapped and frozen at the same time,” Lennox replied, sounding uneasy.

He held up his hand where runes had pooled together, forming tight knots of writing, twisting and wriggling, diving back into the skin and reappearing somewhere else. None of the coding was ancient Cybertronian or anything else Ratchet could read. All of it was cosmic code.

Lennox’s skin suddenly changed coloration and with tense fascination Will watched as it now resembled more of a dark bronze and gold metal, while still being soft skin. It spread, adding sharp slashes and deep grooves that were all optical illusions

It unsettled him even more.

“Interesting,” Ratchet commented, scanning again, this time Will.

The hybrid winced and the runes flared, then his skin reverted back to normal human coloring.

“Damn, that’s uncomfortable, Ratchet.”

“I apologize. But the scans, while not penetrating, show me that what happens with you as a result of the Allspark shard, happened to Tony Stark. I just don’t know why yet.” He turned to the other mech present. “Hot Rod, I need those files,” he repeated.

Hot Rod nodded. “I’ll be right back.”

He left the lab, though rather unwillingly. Once outside he used a private line to reach Jarvis to request the files. He would have to call Pepper, too.

Sighing softly to himself, Hot Rod waited for Jarvis to answer his call.

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Pepper didn’t know how she made it through the call without losing it. Without laughing hysterically or crying or screaming or even losing the ability of rational thought.

Tony had been attacked by a crazy woman. He had been injected with Extremis. He was now in a cocoon of metal of some kind.

No one knew what was going to happen.

Ratchet was running simulations on the files he had recovered from Stark Labs.

Pepper felt herself starting to shake.

I need to clear his schedule. I need to make arrangements. Have to call Keller. Rhodey has to know.

Keller would cover them. She felt a wave of relief at the presence of the former SecDef. It was one less worry and he could represent Tony if anything important came up.

“Jarvis?” she spoke up, her voice unnaturally calm.

“Yes, Ms. Potts?”

She hesitated. Then, “Did Hot Rod inform you of the latest events?”

“Yes. I’m very much aware of Mr. Stark’s condition. I supplied Ratchet with the required files.”

“Good. Anything in the lab that needs attention?”

“No. I have locked down everything of importance.”

“Good.”

Pepper stood in the middle of the living room, unable to decide what to do next.

“May I suggest a cup of tea?” Jarvis offered.

She smiled dimly. It was something that had first happened when Tony had been abducted in Afghanistan. She had started spending her work time over at the sprawling complex Tony Stark called a home and she had drunk tea. One day she had found the water already hot and ready to be poured over the leaves.

Pepper had thanked Jarvis, the AI had replied, and the ‘tea ceremony’ had begun.

Now she walked over to the kitchen where the hot water was ready. Her hands trembled as she poured herself a cup.

“Shall I inform Mr. Rhodes?” Jarvis asked.

“Yes. Let him know we have a… situation. I’ll talk to him then.”

“Very well, Ms. Potts.”

“Thanks, Jarvis.”

She had a few minutes to settle her nerves until she had to tell Rhodey what had happened – and what had happened anyway? She had no real idea. The Autobots had no idea.

This was worse than a ‘mundane’ kidnapping. This was alien and weird and… something that could only happen to Tony Stark.

Pepper laughed a little, sounding desperate. Her cell phone rang and she flinched.

“Mr. Rhodes wants to talk to you,” Jarvis informed her.

Pepper picked up her Blackberry and collected herself. “Hello, Rhodey…”

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When Banachek had approached him with the offer to take over as chairman of the board of Stark Industries, John Keller had been surprised. He knew SI and about the involvement of Howard Stark when the Manhattan Project had first been put into motion. Stark senior had always been a major developer for the United State s military and his son had smoothly taken over, pushing Stark Industries, acquiring millions worth of contracts. A lot of technology today was thanks to SI. Had Keller known back then that everything had already been laced with Cybertronian technology, he would probably have flipped.

As it was, it had taken a lot more to make him aware of what was going on behind the backs of the people and the government. Now he was part of that secrecy.

When he had retired from his post as Secretary of Defense, Keller had known it wouldn’t be a quiet life tending to his garden or playing Canaster. Still, he hadn’t imagined he’d be heading up the board of directors at Stark Industries.

Of course he knew who Tony Stark was. Of course he had known about Iron Man. Of course he had read everything there was about the man, including secret information only Stark and the Autobots knew. Like the arc reactor.

Now Stark had gotten himself into a very tight spot and it was up to Keller to cover the man’s back. He had help in form of Pepper Potts, Stark’s personal assistant, who had a lot of routine in that kind of work. She had worked for the man long enough.

Looking at the schedule Pepper had already rearranged, Keller nodded to himself. He could do this. He had done the same while working for the US government. Actually, that had been more complicated. He laughed a little to himself. A lot more complicated and restricted. This would be a walk in the park.

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“Nothing can penetrate the shell,” Ratchet said, looking at the assembled Autobot team. “It’s very much like trying to scan the Allspark. No one ever managed that either.” Ratchet looked at Lennox, who appeared a little uncomfortable. “Or like trying to scan Will when he doesn’t want to be scanned.”

“Tony was never touched by the Allspark,” Optimus stated.

“No, but he had access to Sector Seven’s files and he experimented with what he called P-Cells. They are derived from our own systems’ abilities to repair superficial damage.”

“And he looks like an Allspark egg why?” Ironhide wanted to know.

“I have no idea. It could be the work of the Extremis, coupled with the P-Cells.”

“The P-Cells were for the suit,” Hot Rod argued. “He doesn’t have them in him.”

“How do you know?” the medic challenged.

“Uh, I don’t… but Tony wanted the suit to be able to repair superficial damage… he wouldn’t just inject the cells into himself. It makes no sense!”

“All I have are theories,” Ratchet told them. “I don’t know enough about what is happening inside the shell. Maybe Extremis sees the P-Cells as important enough to be replicated inside Tony. Maybe it’s what needs to be done to make him compatible with the armor. Maybe they got into his blood and Extremis sees them as part of the human body.”

“We’re clueless,” Ironhide summed it all up. “We sit and wait and see what happens.”

Ratchet nodded, looking extremely unhappy.

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One of the many things that had changed for Will was that he needed less sleep than the normal human being. Three to four hours were long and he still felt incredibly rested. Ironhide had mused about recharge and Lennox had glared at him for suggesting he was a mech.

“Hybrid,” had been Ironhide’s correction.

Whatever.

Tonight – this morning – hadn’t been different. Had he still been completely human he would have blamed the freaky events around Tony Stark. As it was, he was freaked out, especially about his reaction to the metal that so eerily looked like the Allspark. Naturally, sleep hadn’t really come.

Since two hours of rest were apparently all his body had needed tonight, Will had silently crept outside again and enjoyed the silence. He walked his usual route that took him to a rock formation not far away. He started to jog halfway to the rocks, feeling his body unwind from the tension that had been inside him ever since he had first seen the cocoon.

Will stopped at the closest boulder, hopping on. He pulled up his legs and pushed his long sleeves back. The runes were barely there. He traced one as it dove back into his skin. Will wondered why he had reacted to the metal. It wasn’t like it – or he – was the Allspark reborn. He traced the permanent glyph chain around his wrist.

Something prickled down his neck and he tensed a little as he searched the dawn for whatever his senses had picked up. More runes moved lazily across his skin.

Then he saw the dark, humanoid form walking across the desert and he almost groaned.

“What are you doing here?” he sighed instead.

Ironhide’s holographic projection, something he used so sparingly it always surprised the hell out of Will if he did, sat down next to him on the boulder. The mech hadn’t really put much effort into it. Not that he needed to. It was night, they were alone, and the projection could disappear in the blink of an eye.

“Ratchet called me.”

“What for?”

Silence.

“’hide…”

Blue eyes, unnatural and alien, in a humanoid face that lacked any true features, regarded him. Lennox wondered where the mech had parked. He could project the hologram, though with a growing distance, the hard light component started to falter.

Instead of an answer, Ironhide traced the runes on Will’s arms, watched them dance around his finger tips. Lennox felt himself tense a little.

“He told me how strongly you reacted to the cocoon. When I couldn’t find you on the base grounds, I thought you might be here.”

Will suppressed a sigh. “I’m predictable.”

“No. You’re tense.” The holographic fingers curled around his wrist and the runes seemed to frolic around the contact.

“Yeah, well, maybe a little.” Lennox shrugged. “The reaction freaked me.”

“What did you feel?”

“Like a little jolt. No whispers, no strange vibrations, just a jolt. My skin changed and the runes were agitated.” Will looked at the hand covering his wrist. The touch felt good. “You don’t have to do this, Ironhide.”

“You don’t like it?”

“That’s not the point…”

The runes had almost disappeared and he felt a lot less upset. The hologram wavered a little, the touch becoming less cohesive, and then it disappeared. Instead Ironhide’s real form, the robotic one, loomed over his partner. Will looked up into the dark face, almost obscured in the dim light. Blue optics met his gaze. Ironhide knelt down and reached out. He drew a finger over the exposed skin.

“You know you can come to me, Will,” he said softly. “About these things. I’m not freaked out.”

“But I was… still am. I’m not sure I would have made much sense. “

“Sometimes company is all the comfort you need.”

Lennox smiled a little. “Yeah. Thanks for the offer.”

“You think you can go back? Face this?”

“I have to. Because I want to know what the hell is happening.”

Ironhide smirked. Then he transformed and opened a door. It was an offer; Will took it.

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Ratchet had studied the files Jarvis had transferred to the Autobot base computer and he was stunned to see what this human had done. Tony Stark had an understanding of Cybertronian technology that was only eclipsed by Sam’s. He had combined research from Sector Seven, his own ideas and what Dr. Hansen’s Extremis was capable of. It had all been meshed together into something incredible. Something even Ratchet didn’t understand completely so far.

The Autobot medic looked at the data he had from the cocoon. There was terribly little. Ratchet had scanners aimed at the cocoon, but they picked up next to nothing. It was incredibly well shielded.

“Anything new?” Optimus asked as he joined his old friend.

“No. This wasn’t ready, Prime. Stark was injected with an experimental prototype that was never tested. Nothing what happened could have been predicted.”

“You think he survived?” Prime asked softly. “That there is life in this cocoon?”

“I hope so,” Ratchet answered, voice even, betraying nothing. “No scanner can tell what’s happening inside.”

The Autobot leader nodded once. “Keep me updated.”

“Will do.”

With that Prime left again and Ratchet was alone once more. He wondered briefly how long it would take until they saw any kind of change, then pushed that thought aside. However long it took, the only hope was that Tony Stark survived this.

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Hot Rod sat with his back against the wall, legs pulled up, arms resting on his knees, and watched the cocoon. He felt responsible for what had happened to Tony. He was his guardian and he had not managed to keep him safe from the very woman Tony had hired to help him develop the Extremis. Now the virus was inside him and they had no idea what it was doing to him inside the cocoon.

There was a crackling sound. Hot Rod’s optics narrowed.

Another crackling, then fine lines appeared on the surface of the cocoon.

Hot Rod jumped up, immediately sending alerts to Ratchet and Optimus Prime.

He watched in amazement and not just a little horror as the cocoon started to break open. Bluish light appeared in the cracks which grew ever-faster and ever more numerous over the uneven surface. Runes faded into nothingness and then… the metal melted.

It melted into the human figure now slowly revealed.

Hot Rod gaped. He heard Ratchet arrive, he heard the medic curse, but all he could do was watch the transformation. Tony’s form was more and more visible. The metal was like a liquid life form, sinking into Tony’s very human and very naked form. Hot Rod briefly wondered where his clothes had ended up, but that thought disappeared when Tony abruptly sat up, gasping. Eyes wide open, he bent over, coughing, then he groaned.

“Tony?”

He knelt down, carefully reaching out but not touching.

Brown eyes, slightly glassy, met his optics.

\-- Hot Rod? --

The mech froze. “W-what?”

“What happened?” Tony rasped.

Before Hot Rod could answer, Stark’s eyes widened.

“Hansen,” he whispered.

“We don’t know what happened to you, Tony,” Ratchet could be heard. “Can you remember anything?”

“She… she stole the Extremis. She injected me with a batch.”

Tony touched his stomach, rubbing over smooth, unmarked flesh. He stared at the spot where Maya Hansen had most likely shot him, looking briefly confused, then he frowned.

“I was injected with Extremis.”

“And you survived,” Ratchet rumbled. “From what I read in the files, it’s a miracle.”

Tony rubbed a hand over his face, then stopped and touched his chest. The arc reactor.

“Still there,” he murmured.

Yes. But different. Hot Rod couldn’t put his finger on it, but it looked very different from the last time he had seen it.

“Weird,” Tony muttered, brushing quizzical fingers over the device that allowed him to survive.

Suddenly his other hand touched the reactor casing as well, fingering along the edges, and he laughed. It sounded almost hysterical.

“God!”

“Tony?”

\-- It’s still there, Roddy. It’s still there! – “Extremis is supposed to rewrite the human body, take the perfect blueprint from my brain and alter it according to its orders. But the reactor is still there.”

Hot Rod stared at his friend. It was so weird, as if he heard some of the words directly in his processor while others used his audios as a medium.

“But it changed it nevertheless,” Tony went on. “It’s… look at it! It’s sunk deeper into my chest, molded itself into the perfect shape! There are no more lumpy edges. It’s simply part of my chest now.”

He laughed again, sounding desperate.

“Tony?” Ratchet came closer. “What other changes do you feel?”

“Nothing. I feel okay. Great, actually, perfect!”

“All my readings come up perfect, too.” There was an ominous ring to Ratchet’s voice.

“Ratchet?” Hot Rod asked.

“Everything’s perfect, Hot Rod. Everything. He’s perfectly healthy. He has all new perfect organs and body. Perfect, inside and out.” Ratchet sounded stunned.

\-- Aside from the reactor --

Hot Rod’s head whipped around again. “What in the name of Cybertron…?!”

Tony blinked at him. Then his eyes widened and the smile on his lips was a little less desperate and insane.

“You heard that?”

“Yes. How…?”

\-- Extremis. I told you I wanted it reprogrammed to my specifications, right? I wanted it as an interface between me and the armor. It’s an interface now. Just not for solely the armor --

“Great Cybertron,” Hot Rod whispered.

“Cool, huh?”

“You’re taking this well.”

Tony grinned. “Hey, I knew what this was going to do one day. I just didn’t count on it being injected into me by some crazed scientist.”

Ratchet looked at them, optics narrowed. “What are you talking about?” he now asked.

“Tony… accessed my personal com frequency,” Hot Rod explained.

Blue optics flared. “How?”

“Extremis,” Tony chuckled. He looked around the lab. “And I can feel the machines in here. Not just you guys. You’re complicated and I don’t understand a word of data, but the rest…” -- Wow, there’s security cameras almost everywhere! What do you do? Peep in on others? – “Extremis must have rewired my brain. I told it to do it because I wanted to be able to use the armor more effectively. It did more.” – People would pay for that peep show, Roddy—

\--Don’t you dare!— Hot Rod exclaimed, a bit off-kilter by the way the conversation jumped between vocal and something close to a private channel.

“It was never finished,” Ratchet said.

“Yeah. What Maya injected me with was a prototype. Never tested, unsafe, and most likely fatal. I survived. And it worked! All of it worked!” – Don’t you think Ironhide went just a little overboard installing a camera in a cupboard?! --

Hot Rod ignored the running commentary, but his amusement leaked and Tony smirked at him.  
Ratchet flipped a new device out of his lower arm. He scanned Tony and hummed to himself.

“Extremis was given instructions what to do,” Tony was still talking. “But not how to do it. The engineering part was easy, but the medical design was never finished. There were no limits. It just… it went with what it had, what it found.”

“And it found the arc reactor,” Ratchet commented. “Which is now fused with your body and very much part of the blueprint Extremis used.” He was still scanning, not looking happy. “I detect several billion nanotubes inside your body, Mr. Stark, as well as foreign matter that reminds me strongly of protoform camouflage cells. The nanotubes are forming a fine mesh or net throughout your body, wired into your organs, most prominently your brain.”

The lab’s main screen lit up and a three-dimensional human body appeared in blue outlines. Tony gazed at it, eyes alight, not the least bit shocked or frightened.

“Are you tapping into this?” Hot Rod asked softly.

Tony chuckled. “No. It’s always there, running in the back of my head. It’s like being wi-fi’d into it all. I’m part of these computers and it’s… the most amazing thing I ever witnessed.”

Ratchet had another scanner in hand moments later. “No pain? No overwhelming signals?” he asked sharply. “Nausea?”

“None. I’m really okay. Perfectly fine for someone who was supposed to be murdered.” Stark shrugged. “If you could get me some clothes, I’d even be decent.” His grin widened.

“You’re logged in constantly,” Hot Rod echoed, not even making it a question.

“Yep. Now, about those clothes..?”

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\--This is stupid, you know. What does Prime think he can accomplish?--

Hot Rod watched his friend with amusement in his blue optics. – It’s a matter of security. Yours and ours.--

\-- Roddy, I can access cell phones, satellites, computers… your security cameras. I can tell you what’s going on in the main hangar if I want to. Keeping me here… ? Stupid. –

The silver mech shrugged. Their new way of communicating was… interesting. He found Tony very much at ease with his abilities. Of course he was, Tony had told him. His brain had been rebuilt to handle this. He had known what to expect. He just hadn’t expected it to come about like this. Using the Extremis was like walking and breathing. He could do it easily, without even thinking about it. It was what made him different from Sam, who had had to learn quite a bit and had suffered through quite some backlash.

The door to the examination room, Ratchet’s med lab, opened and Tony almost laughed as Sam walked in.

“My new guard dog?” he joked.

“Actually, I wanted to see how you are,” the younger man answered, frowning a little. “But if you want me to leave…”

Tony shook his head, gesturing at the, for a human, huge table he sat on, fully clothed and with a thermos of coffee. Essential food, so to speak.

“C’mon up. It’s nice.”

Hot Rod lifted the technopath up and Sam nodded a thanks.

\--You can stay, you know -- Tony sent as Hot Rod made to leave.

\-- I’ll see if I can talk to Prime – the R8 replied, smiling briefly.

\-- Oh… yeah… thanks –

Tony looked at Sam, who was frowning, as if trying to think of something he had just missed.

“You can feel it, hm?”

“I can feel something. It’s like Bumblebee accessing a system.”

Tony’s brows rose. He still had to get a better idea about what was going on between Sam and Bumblebee, and while he had a very dirty mind and was open for lot of things, he had never considered a relationship between a mech and a human. Then again, Sam could access Bumblebee’s mind… like he could now link up to everyone else, too.

He almost laughed out loud. Damn. That would make for some pretty cool sex…

“Ratchet gave me the files on the Extremis project. I’m not really good with the bio-tech side, the medical components, but the engineering is… wow.”

“My thoughts exactly when I first read over Dr. Hansen’s notes.” Tony felt the same excitement ripple through him as the day he had first read it.

“Would you have actually injected yourself?”

He silently studied the serious expression of the technopath sitting across from him.

“I wanted it for the armor. I thought I might be able to create an interface that linked me and the armor…”

“You would have injected yourself,” Sam stated, frowning.

Tony shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Definitely. You’re the kind of man who would.”

“Know me so well?”

“I know what you did in the past and this would just fit.”

Stark chuckled. “Yeah. Maybe.” He poured himself a new mug of coffee and offered the thermos to Sam. “Extremis did everything it was supposed to do… just a little differently than I imagined,” he added.

Sam regarded him curiously, declining the coffee. “Because it was still experimental?”

“Because Hansen never finished the final stages. She never tested it, never ran simulations. She decided to sell it off to a higher bidder.” He smiled bitterly. “Sure she hoped I would die from the injection.”

“You didn’t.”

“No. Apparently not.” Tony’s smile grew even darker. “Extremis took care of that.”

“I know someone who’s quite good at training technopaths,” Sam remarked casually.

Tony frowned. “I’m not a technopath, Sam. I had nanites rewiring my brain and my body.”

“Which gives you abilities like mine.”

“I can connect to satellites and computer systems… or mechs… not read their minds.”

“You’re not far from it. If Ironhide or the others choose to send information, you’d be able to pick it up.”

Tony shook his head. “You abilities are organic in nature. Mine are techno-enhanced. I have those things floating around in my body by the billion. They’re… like a separate entity.” He frowned. “Now there’s a disturbing thought.”

“They’re not sentient.”

“Huh?”

Sam smiled a little sheepishly. “I checked. I can feel them.”

Tony’s expression was suddenly stony. “You can access them?”

“Not that I tried… since they’re tiny and like a hive mind, like bees, I guess. And I wouldn’t!” he protested. “I never would, Tony!”

Stark was silent, then nodded sharply. It was clear that the idea that Sam could not only simply shut down the arc reactor – which thankfully no longer had the function to keep the shrapnel from his heart – but could also control millions of nanotubes inside him didn’t sit well with Tony. Sam couldn’t reassure him enough to disperse the last doubts. This was a matter of blind trust. Right now, Tony couldn’t trust the younger man not to flip and simply kill him.  
What if someone took control of Sam? What if Sam lost it and thought Tony was an enemy?

Sure, the mechs had to trust in him, too. He was the ultimate weapon.

“Listen,” Sam interrupted his dark train of thought, “I don’t know about how you handle this, but I was trained in the use of my abilities. Maybe you want to ask for a few pointers, too?”

“Barricade?” Tony exclaimed. “I don’t think so!”

And he didn’t need this help. He knew exactly what he was capable of. He knew all there was about Extremis because he had specified the programming. What it did was what he had told it to do. A few more weeks and it might have happened a lot more smoothly.

A shrug. “Just a thought.”

“Hell, no. I don’t need training, Sam. It’s… think of it as uploading a computer program to your hard drive. The program runs and the hard drive handles it. No hesitation, no questions.”

Sam looked intrigued and Tony grinned like a little boy.

“Cool, eh?”

XXX XXX XXX XXX

Sam let his technopathy rise and it was like touching a million tiny cells of electronic life, all with the same mind, a hive mind. He rationally knew Tony was human, but the technopath also detected the changes.

“How bad do I feel?” Tony joked, but there was an edge to his tone. The same he had had when Sam had first told him that he could offline the armor with a few well-placed technopathic blows.

“Not bad, just… different. It’s like… well, the hive analogy still stands. It’s a steady hum, all on the same frequency.”

Stark nodded, playing with the nearly empty coffee mug.

“Do you feel different?” Sam wanted to know. “Ratchet said you’re in perfect health.”

“I feel great, yeah. Like never before. No twinges, no pain, no nothing. Aside from this.” Tony rubbed his right hand over the covered arc reactor. “This stayed.”

“Because you need it for the armor.”

Tony’s brows shot up. Sam shrugged.

“Hey, I’m not stupid. I know what it did and does, aside from keeping shrapnel away from your heart.”

“That is gone. The shrapnel,” Tony added. Because the Extremis took care of it. “Got a healthy heart, new liver, everything, the whole deal.” He smirked. “The heart and liver are especially great deals.”

Sam grimaced. “You wanted the Extremis to work on the suit. You wanted the armor to be faster, to have a better reaction time. You never gave specifications about a new power source, so the nanotubes see the arc reactor as the main power source.”

Tony grinned. “Yeah, you are good, and I never thought you were stupid, Sam. I didn’t think of the reactor, actually. When I worked with the P-Cells and Extremis, it never crossed my mind. Now it’s a done deal.”

He was still rubbing over the smooth fiberglass he felt through his shirt and finally dropped his hand. Extremis had modified the reactor to integrate better, but it hadn’t removed it.

“Say…” Tony suddenly said, a thought striking him. “If you can feel the nanotubes… I’d like you to try and take them out.”

Sam’s eyes widened. “What?!” he exclaimed.

Hot Rod suddenly loomed over him. Tony had been aware of him coming back into the room. It was like he now knew the mechs by energy signature and he wondered how Sam recognized them. This warranted further discussions.

“No way!” Hot Rod decided.

“Hey, last time he took me out with a thought. The suit was fried. I want to know if Extremis is just as vulnerable.”

“Tony, you just woke up from some kind of crazy metal cocoon,” Sam argued.

“All the better for me to test it now.”

“No one would attack you as a human. And if there’s electronics involved, it’s a sure bet I can eventually crack it,” the technopath added.

“I want to know.”

“No.”

“Sam…”

“No!”

“We could call it a controlled experiment.”

“There’s nothing ‘controlled’ about my abilities, Tony!”

Tony smirked. “You know what you’re doing, Sam. You took me down with almost surgical precision. This is nothing else.”

“It’s too risky!” Hot Rod argued.

“I need to know how vulnerable Extremis is.”

“Then put on the armor and make it a real fight!” Sam snapped back.

Tony tilted his head, smiling. “Okay. Let’s do that.”

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Colonel James Rhodes felt torn between slugging his friend and hugging the stuffing out of him. The first option would only serve to calm his frazzled nerves for the moment, the second would probably end with Tony getting one into the face anyway, so he settled for reading him the riot act.

Tony stood there, with an amused expression, almost laughing. He wanted to strangle him.

Jerk! Idiot! Arrogant prick!

“I’m glad I’m alive, too, Rhodey,” he finally interrupted the tirade.

Rhodes had spent three days in constant worry. It had been worse than three months of not knowing whether Tony was still alive or not. This had been worse because this time Tony hadn’t been kidnapped. He had been attacked by some crazy scientist and injected with a nanotech virus. It was nothing you could shoot at or go after. Rhodey had never felt so helpless.

“Arrogant bastard!” he now snarled.

“Hey, the plan wasn't that she tried to kill me.”

“Right! The plan was for her to develop some kind of super tech virus to inject yourself with?”

“In a way.”

“You’re such a bastard!”

“And you’re repeating yourself. Did you bring the armor?”

“That’s all you can think about? Pepper and I were worried sick! We didn’t know whether you’d come out of this in one piece!”

“I’m fine,” Tony said calmly.

“As fine as you were after you nearly died the first time?”

Stark smiled, though the smile wavered for a moment. Rhodey hated to remind him of those nightmares. Even now, after almost three years, it was still something that gave him the willies, remembering how he had found his friend, had looked at the crude implant in Stark’s chest, and had known something terrible had happened. The events haunted Tony even now, but he had come out of it literally a new man.

“Even better. Now, the armor, please?”

The fucking armor! Again! Rhodey admired Tony’s genius, his inventions, the way he could come up with something as nifty as a miniaturized arc reactor in a cave in the desert and have it work. The man was a genius and knew it. His brain was impossible to match. But his personality was something else. While Tony had changed his ways a little – he no longer drank himself into a near-coma, his womanizing days were apparently over and he had stopped being such an arrogant idiot most of the time – there were days when Rhodey wondered if Tony Stark was really all that sane.

After what had happened now… not so much.

Genius and insanity lay closely together, he knew. And Tony Stark had always walked a fine line.

XXX XXX XXX XXX

Tony smiled at his friend, aware that Rhodey was close to slugging him. Actually, if it made him feel better…

He didn’t really have to ask about the suit. He felt the presence of the armor in the small crate that some of the soldiers had already unloaded from Rhodey’s car. It was a familiar feeling, like an old friend, and his brain immediately logged on to it. This was needed. This was him. Not just part of him any more, he was Iron Man.

Rhodey gave him a venomous look and flipped open the latches. Tony knew he had to make it up to him. More than just dinner and drinks. He owed a lot to this man.

The armor had been piled inside the box, probably by Jarvis, and it looked rather good.

Goddamn, it looked perfect! So fucking perfect! He touched it with the Extremis and it was like a void being filled. Nothing had ever been like this.

And now to make it all the better…

“Start,” Tony only said, his voice betraying nothing of the emotions boiling up inside him.

“Holy shit!” Rhodey exclaimed and stepped back.

Ratchet was scanning already, optics bright, and he muttered something in Cybertronian.

Tony almost laughed in joy as he watched his skin turn the color of his usual undergarment, a deep black. But this time it looked more polished, more like metal… and there were tiny reddish orange, crystal-like insertions visible in the forearms, torso and legs. They had been formed first and from them the blackness spread. The clothes were absorbed, as if their material was needed to form Tony’s new outfit. Even his face was covered by the metal substance.

He didn’t feel constrained. He didn’t feel like he was suffocating. His eyes were still the same, he could see perfectly, he could breathe, had his hearing, and he smelled the faint metal tang. He licked over his lips, which felt smooth and alien. It didn’t freak him out; it was just another step.

“Shit, Tony, can you still breathe?” Rhodey asked.

“Perfectly. This is fantastic,” Stark answered, fascinated.

He wondered what he looked like. He could only see a part of his body. The red, polished ovals, like gems, poked out of the blackness. Part of him. Generated by the Extremis together with the P-Cells. He knew what they were. Fluid/metal interface units. Every protoform mech had them.

“This is a perfect replica of a protoform skin,” the Autobot medic could be heard. “It’s not unlike Will’s transformation, without the size changes. I can still detect human flesh and bones underneath.”

Tony felt the armor, like a part of himself, a hand, an arm, a leg. He felt it so close that he simply reached out. And it came to him. It was as if Jarvis was attaching each of the metal parts to him, a perfect fit, and each part logging onto him was like a next step to completion. Like a Cybertronian shifting into a new exostructure, Tony acquired his own new ‘shape’. He couldn’t form the armor from the P-Cells. He didn’t have the ultra-dense mass of a Cybertronian.

A wild thought crossed his mind and he almost grinned wickedly. Not yet, he hadn’t. There was always room for improvement.

Rhodey gaped. He truly gaped. Tony couldn’t fault him for it. He had seen a lot of freaky shit, but this was probably the weirdest ever.

He was Iron Man. He was it with body and soul. Iron Man was him, part of him, now deep inside, inseparable.

Tony laughed, completely happy for the first time in his life. It was such an incredible, indescribable feeling! Like coming home, like being whole…

The armor powered up, using the arc reactor just as he was used to. The interface proves had been different, but the underarmor took care of it all. The feel of it was… beautiful. Just perfect. It was everything he had ever dreamed it should be. Smooth and powerful, filling with the energy the arc reactor provided. He reveled in the feeling, caressing the armor’s ‘presence’ and feeling the echoes of his touches.

Wow…

His mind accessed whatever Tony wanted it to. It felt strange to be right in the middle of a machine, but like with a HUD he looked at all the functions and he could reach out and with thoughts like keystrokes he hacked what he wanted.

And then something intervened, had the systems stutter. He felt his own counter-measures, felt the Extremis rebuild circuits and change coding. Tony turned, the HUD display flashing warnings at him, and he looked at Sam, whose eyes had an intense expression.

“So much for saying ‘no’,” he remarked casually.

“You asked for it,” the technopath replied.

The flight system crashed, then rebooted, then the weapons control faltered. Tony actually felt the Extremis struggle with the attack on his body. But like everything else, it was electronic. It was something Sam could attack again and again. A vicious blow had him hiss in annoyance and a faint headache pulsed behind his forehead. The repulsors died down and there was a harsh warning light about the reactor energy level dropping below eighty.

Shit!

Suddenly it all stopped.

Tony drew a sharp breath. Adrenaline coursed through him and he felt Extremis work.

“Enough?” Sam asked, brows raised, face almost neutral.

“I guess,” he answered, feeling a bit dizzy.

Damn. He was still vulnerable.

And Sam looked like he hadn’t even broken a sweat.

“What in the name of… What’s going on here, Tony?” Rhodey demanded.

“An upgrade,” Tony replied casually, smiling behind the face shield. “One hell of an upgrade.”

“I can see that!”

“I’ll tell you all about it, but right now there’s someone we have to find. Dr. Maya Hansen. She has what’s left of the Extremis prototype and she has sold herself to Fujikawa. It’s property of Stark Industries; mine. I want it back.”

 

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Optimus Prime knew that there was no stopping Tony Stark, unless he resorted to violence. The man was determined and he was more stubborn than was healthy for him. With his new abilities he also had an advantage over other humans, even Sam. Where Sam had to consciously log into a satellite system, Tony was already connected. He only had to change directions, access what was in the background, and collect the data. Extremis handled the download, the buffering, and the storage of that information.

“I’m a walking wi-fi’d up computer,” Tony had joked.

And he was.

In a way he was a mix of Sam’s technopathy with Will’s metamorphic abilities. Ratchet was still puzzling over how the man could create a skin of near-protoform consistency. He theorized that some of the P-Cells had ended up in Tony’s body. Stark had mentioned that he had hurt himself early in the development. Even a small amount of the normally harmless P-Cells would have been enough. The Extremis had incorporated what it felt was needed and already there.

They couldn’t keep him here. They couldn’t foretell what would happen. Ratchet was unable to even predict further complications or changes, just like it had been the case with first Sam and then Will. They had turned out okay, but Tony’s changes had involved a human-made, untested nanotube virus.

They had found the location of Maya Hansen. Satellite surveillance was their advantage. Optimus knew how easy it was to hack into the system of the satellites because he and the others had done it frequently. It was how they had learned about humans and the different cultures. Now Tony did it with such ease, as if he had never done anything else, too. Extremis had rewired him, rebuilt him, changed whatever needed to be changed to accommodate the metamorphosis.

“She’s mine,” Stark now said, drawing the Autobot leader out of his thoughts.

“I can’t stand by and let you kill her.”

It got Prime a dark smile. “I never said anything about killing her.”

Optimus looked at the smaller human, dressed already in his armor, helmet dangling from one hand. There was a hard, determined expression on the narrow features.

“She hasn’t sold Extremis yet. She stayed hidden. All we have to do is arrest her.”

“If she comes without a fight.” Tony rubbed over his armored stomach in an unconscious gesture.

Maya Hansen had been located in a small town near the border of Mexico. Tony had spent more time on getting a lead on where she was going because the location made no sense. There was no larger airport and no train station. The bus going in and out drove by once a week. It was really backwater.

But he had tracked someone else, someone by the name of Rumiko Fujikawa, who had landed at San Diego International Airport, had taken a rental car, and could be easily found by keeping track of the car model and license plate. Her credit card wasn’t in her name. Rumiko Fujikawa had disappeared the moment she had gotten off the plane and ‘Janet Lin’ was currently a few hours drive away from the backwater town. She had switched the car for a motorbike.

“We can handle it, Tony,” Optimus repeated what he had said already.

“Not without me. She betrayed me. She tried to kill me. This is my problem.”

“It is our problem.”

Tony glared at the so much larger Autobot leader. “How do you want to stop me? Shoot me down?”

“No. I can only offer to help you, if you let us.”

Tony snorted. “I can deal with it.”

But he knew Prime would send one or more of his people along. He couldn’t stop the mech from doing so.

“So who’s the volunteer?” he asked coolly.

There was a smile on Prime’s face. “Will has offered to come along since he has the most combat training of the civilians on the base. Colonel Rhodes insisted to be there, too.”

Tony sighed. “Should have known. All right. I guess Ironhide will be there, too?”

Prime smiled. “You guessed correctly.”

Tony knew he was missing something when it came to Lennox and Ironhide, and he planned on finding out about what was going on so subtly that he hadn’t caught on to it yet, but right now he had a traitor to catch.

“Then I’ll be off,” he simply said and left the office.

Optimus contacted Ironhide and Lennox, who had already picked up Rhodes and were on their way. Even if Tony hadn’t agreed, they would have come along. It wasn’t such a long drive, but Stark would probably be faster. He just hoped Tony wouldn’t do anything stupid.

Knowing Stark, it was a fervent hope.

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Sam had watched Tony leave from outside the hangar. He had left the man to argue with Prime and sought out the relative peace and quiet of the desert. There was a tight sensation in his stomach.

::Sam?::

He scrubbed a hand over his face. ::I’m okay::

::You’re not:: Bumblebee argued.

The mech approached him and knelt down. He reached out and touched his partner, the cool metal a pleasant counterpart to how hot his skin felt. It was the weather, he knew, but the attack on Tony had rattled Sam more than he wanted anyone to know.

He wasn’t a weapon!

::He wanted you to do it::

::No reason to do it::

Bumblebee’s hand now cupped his back and Sam leaned against the support. Sometimes he needed the more physical reassurance.

::I don’t like attacking things, Bee. It makes me feel…:: He stopped, then gnashed his teeth. “I’m not a weapon,” he whispered fiercely.

Bumblebee’s thumb rubbed over his tense back. ::You’re not::

Sam sighed and closed his eyes. The use of technopathy had had little repercussions this time. There was hardly a headache. Still, something inside of him cringed at the fact that he could kill with this.

::You’re no killer:: Bumblebee reassured him. ::We all trust you, Sam::

“Yeah,” he said out loud.

He pushed out of the safe cocoon of Bumblebee’s hand and walked back into the base again. Tony had technopathic abilities now, too. He could actually infiltrate with the help of a nanovirus, with no apparent drawbacks, and he could, if he wanted to, use it as a weapon. Sam was no weapon, had never wanted to be one, despite what Barricade said.

Bumblebee followed him, a steady presence in his mind, a support he really needed right now.

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Tony had had some time to think about what he would do, what he might say when he looked into Maya Hansen’s face. He had flown fast, but he hadn’t broken the sound barrier. He needed time to think. Part of him was busy rooting through computer uplinks and enjoying the steady flow of data streams. Extremis was everything he had hoped it would be and more. The moment he could adjust the armor to the new situation, Iron Man would be someone completely new.

Nothing about this really scared him. Maybe he should be having a nervous breakdown about being a walking computer. Maybe he should feel depressed that he still had the arc reactor. Yeah, well, that sucked, but it was necessary. It powered the armor and the P-Cells. It was necessary.

No, this wasn’t scary. He didn’t feel like a freak. There were people with much bigger problems than his out there. He had upgraded himself, he had become faster and stronger. If Extremis worked like Maya had intended it to, Tony would also be immune to viral infections or cellular mutations, like cancer. What remained to be seen was what else his cells would now be immune to.

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Hansen had found refuge in a run-down motel that had seen better days. Most of the rooms were no longer occupied and the dingy main building didn’t inspire much confidence. The motel lived off those who had not much money or needed an anonymous room for the night. Hansen had gotten money at a machine eighty miles ago, had bought supplies and then paid for the room in cash.

Tony knew all that because of the satellites. He knew where the car had been, where Hansen had gone, and if he used Stark Industries’ own satellites, he could even count the money, tell the ingredients of the cheap burrito and see the fine lines of sleepless nights on Maya’s face.

Checking on Ironhide and Will’s progress he found them not too far behind him. He was impressed by the Autobot’s speed. That he had simulated police lights in his front grill helped push cars out of the way and kept them from being stopped for speeding. Stark would still be there first.

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“I could kill him for that stunt!” Rhodes muttered, staring at the road as if he was trying to scare the other drivers away.

Will smiled. He had his hands on Ironhide’s steering wheel, pretending to drive.

“That’s a given with Tony.”

“You have no idea! The man is the most aggravating, arrogant and idiotic human being I ever had the displeasure of dealing with!”

“And he’s your friend.”

Rhodes snorted. “Yeah. Tough, huh?”

“He must have at least some redeeming qualities.”

“He’s stinking rich and he knows his way around an engine. He’s a fucking genius and he knows it!” He sighed and shook his head. “When you get to know him, he’s also a really good guy. Somewhere deep down inside. Well, not so deep inside any more. He changed after Afghanistan. But this now? The whole nano-stuff? Typically Tony! You can’t tell me he didn’t plan to inject himself with the freaking stuff!”

“He probably did,” Will agreed.

“He most definitely did,” Ironhide rumbled.

Rhodes grimaced. “Yeah. Tony’s a risk-taker. Always was. Who in his right mind flies to Afghanistan, into the middle of a war zone, to present military weaponry? He could have sent one of his guys, but no! He gets himself kidnapped and nearly dies!”

Lennox regarded his passenger calmly. “It wasn’t his fault. He was betrayed by a man he trusted. And he survived.”

The colonel was silent, then nodded jerkily. “Damned best day in my life.”

“Tony is a remarkable man.”

Another nod.

“And what happened to him this time was an accident, Colonel. He survived something that should have killed him.”

“Like last time.”

“Maybe.”

Rhodes sighed deeply. “He costs me nerves, I can tell you. Ever since we met he has. Son-of-a-bitch.”

Will chuckled. “He probably says the same about you.”

The other man grinned. “Yeah. But I don’t go flying around in some personal armor.”

“But you would if he ever offered you one.”

That got Lennox raised brows. Will just grinned. Rhodes shrugged and went back to staring out onto the road.

“Maybe,” he finally said. “But I’m quite happy where I am now.”

Lennox didn’t comment on that. They were by now heading off the highway and onto a rather bad road, which would soon turn into a dusty strip in the middle of nowhere.

“Ironhide? Anything on Stark?” Will asked.

“He’s about half an hour ahead of us.”

“Let’s hope he won’t do something stupid.”

Rhodes chuckled. “Tony and stupid go hand in hand. Let’s just hope he leaves the town standing.”

Will had to agree.

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He landed around the back of the dusty place and scanned. There were several small life signs, which meant rats or cats, two humans in the main building, one sleeping in one of the motel rooms, and one not far from where he was now. From the satellite images he knew it was Maya Hansen because she had parked her car in front of the dingy place.

Tony walked over without hesitation, aimed the repulsors at the door and fired. Subtlety and ‘let’s talk about it’ had gone out of the window fast when she had pushed the injector into him.  
Dust billowed around him as he stepped through the door. The room was cheaply furnished, the paint peeling off the walls, the bathroom a health hazard, the mattress a collection of unspeakable things. Maya had been sitting in the chair, which had toppled over, and she was just getting to her feet, a gun in her hand.

She stared at him as if she was seeing a ghost. Well, she was – a ghost wearing the armor of Iron Man. The Tony Stark of before no longer existed. He had been reconfigured into something completely new.

“Miss me?” Tony asked lightly.

“How..?”

“How did I survive? Well, I’d call it luck, Maya. The Extremis you injected me with was an untested prototype, like all the other vials you have in there.”

He nodded at the carrier.

“It could have killed me. It could have sent me into a coma. It could have disfigured me. What it did was exactly what I wanted it to.” He grinned behind the faceplate. “Not that your last stock will work on anyone else. I was a special case, you see.”

She shook her head, clutching the gun.

“You really think this will accomplish anything?” Stark went on conversationally. “The armor is impenetrable for mere bullets.”

“I’m not going to jail!”

“It’s better than dead, Maya. Think about it.”

“You won’t kill me! You can’t! It would be murder.”

“An eye for an eye? Ring a bell?”

“You’re not a killer!”

He cocked his head. “I thought the same of you.”

“I didn’t want… I never planned…” Her white-knuckled grip didn’t ease. “I didn’t want this.”  
“Oh please. Don’t tell me a sob story about a sick mother or a missing child. I checked your background. Both your parents are dead. You have no siblings, you never married, you have no kids. You did this for money, Maya, and money alone.”

She was chewing her lip, then suddenly raised the gun.

Tony was faster. His armored fingers clamped around her wrist, bone creaking underneath the grip, and the bullet went into the ground. He pushed his faceplate into her face.

“You lose, Dr. Hansen.”

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Tony didn’t feel anything as he watched the arrest of Dr. Maya Hansen. There was no official police presence, just lots of cars and people in smart looking suits. Will stood off to one side, watching it all, leaning against Ironhide. Someone Tony thought he had seen at the Autobot base was pushing Hansen into the back of an unmarked car. The carrier full of Extremis vials had been secured. Tony would see to it that the contents were destroyed. He had survived the injection; the next person might die or go insane.

Stark smiled darkly behind the helmet’s cover. Maybe he was insane already and didn’t even know it. Everyone else apparently thought he was.

Rhodey had been there and he was currently talking to the plain-clothed guys. Now and then he glanced at Tony, but when Hansen was in the car, he got in as well. All Tony received was a nod. He nodded back.

Lennox walked over to the quite prominent armored figure and raised his brows. “Closure?” he asked.

Tony chuckled. “It’s only just begun, Will.”

The car with Maya in it pulled away. One of the plain-clothed men walked over to Lennox and almost saluted. It was quite clear that despite having no more rank in the military, Lennox was respected and still viewed as a figure of authority. Tony smiled to himself.

“We’re done, sir,” the man said. “Where should we take the cargo?”

“I’ll take it,” Tony said before Will could answer. “It’s my responsibility.”

Lennox just nodded his agreement and the plain-clothed soldier left. Soon there was no one in the dusty parking lot but Iron Man, Lennox and Ironhide.

“You want to ride back with us or fly?”

“Fly,” Tony said tonelessly.

He needed the time in the air. He needed to get his thoughts straight.

“Sure. Want us to take the Extremis stuff?”

“No need.”

He raised a gauntlet and fired up the repulsor. One controlled blast was all it needed and the carrier was dust; totally obliterated.

“Problem solved,” he said levelly, then fired the propulsion system and took off.

No one tried to stop him. He just accelerated and headed as high as he could, keeping out of the way of any planes or other airborne vehicles. His mind cast out toward the data streams all around him and it was actually more relaxing than anything he had ever felt. It was almost peaceful. Just data, no emotions. Nothing that was either good or evil. Data was neutral. It was what people did with it that made it evil – or good. Like Extremis. The nanotubes as such were neutral. They did what they were programmed to do. The person handling them decided what to do; it was the decision of a human being.

Like Tony Stark.

Tony knew he would have taken Extremis. If Maya had run successful simulations, he would have injected himself.

He smiled to himself. Was he good or evil? Evil, according to the media. A killer. A merchant of death. Even his change of course hadn’t quieted the voices. Weapons contracts had dwindled to only those associated with the Autobots, but the public didn’t know that. The public only saw him as a weapons monger. His past would always haunt him.

SHIELD had taken care of Tony’s declaration in front of the assembled press years before. He had ‘outed’ himself as Iron Man, but that had been corrected to Stark supplying the gear for the unknown man in the high tech suit. Fury had arranged for witnesses to claim to have seen Iron Man while Stark had been answering questions for the press. There had been visual proof of Stark being in New York at a dinner while Iron Man was taking care of some terrorist group somewhere else.

The media interest in Tony Stark as a new kind of superhero diminished. While Tony hated to play the game, he knew Fury had made the right decision. He would have killed himself and SI with this. It had been a heat of the moment decision, riding on an adrenaline high, wanting the good press to finally annihilate all the rumors and lies.

For a moment he had felt incredible.

Now he was just the billionaire playboy again.

Tony adjusted his course, accelerating a little more before going up into the atmosphere. He flew through low-hanging clouds, felt them brush over his armor even though there was no sensor net in the suit, and he spread his arms when he broke through. It stopped his propulsion, kept him hovering in the nothingness of the stratosphere.

He exhaled sharply, tilted his head back and looked at the darkness above him. Space. He had been there already, but he would be there again. The Ark project was still not written off for him. He would step aboard this alien vessel.

Whether he was good or evil.

Tony laughed.

Iron Man was good. He was a hero. Tony Stark was a man with a black vest that was only now taking on a few white spots.

One day he might even be able to look at himself in the mirror and accept what he saw.

He was so tempted to fly higher, to try orbit again. It was like a secret longing, a goal in life he had yet to achieve.

“Jarvis?”

“Yes, Sir?”

Tony chuckled. “Good to know you’re still here.”

“Where would I go?” the AI asked, sounding slightly sarcastic.

Tony smiled. “Download and store all data on the private server assigned to Maya Hansen at Stark Labs. Run a check on any entries made by her on any of Stark Industries’ servers. Then erase whatever she did. Delete her presence from the virtual world. Compress all data files on Extremis and put them on my private server, file them under XTR01. Password and securlog them.”

“May I remind you that you don’t need me for this, Sir?”

Tony raised his brows. “No?”

“Extremis renders me obsolete.”

“Nothing can ever render you obsolete, Jarvis,” he said softly. “I need you. Never doubt that.”

And when had the AI started to develop such thoughts… even emotions?

“Good to hear, Sir. I’ll get right on it.”

He smiled again.

“Thanks, Jarvis.”

“Anything for you, Sir.”

He smiled humorlessly. “I’ll be home soon.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

Tony lowered himself back to flight level and headed toward LA. In the back of his mind the data streams were a reassuring hum.

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Rumiko Fujikawa stood at the corner of the intersection and watched a large black truck pull up to the motel she was supposed to meet Dr. Maya Hansen. Just twenty minutes earlier someone else had entered the room. A man dressed in a full body armor, red and golden, and she had known she had lost.

Hansen had been made, the stupid bitch.

Rumiko had told her father it was a waste of time. Waiting had brought this upon them. If they had immediately made the deal, Extremis would be in their hands now. As it was, Hansen had had cold feet after she had attacked and probably killed Tony Stark. She had contacted them twice, first to tell them what had happened and that she would run, and then a day later to change the meeting point.

Now everything was lost.

She witnessed how Hansen was put into an unmarked car, then how the man in the armor blew apart the box that contained the Extremis prototype.

The pretty Japanese woman zipped the heavy leather combination closed and started the engine of her rented bike. She rolled down the street, then accelerated. Only when she was away at a safe distance did she switch on the lights.

Tomorrow she would be back on her way to Japan. The failure of Dr. Hansen would remain on her mind.

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Pepper had the distinct feeling of a déjà vu as she waited for the Airforce transport plane to taxi into a parking position. When it had finally stopped and was lowering the cargo ramp, Pepper half expected to see a wheelchair, Tony sitting in it, Rhodey at his side. She expected an exhausted looking man with haunted eyes, signs of pain and injuries, being carefully accompanied by Rhodey to walk down the ramp.

As it was, Tony Stark looked like life itself. He was smiling broadly at her, almost bounced down the ramp, and it was such a contrast to the last time she had been here and waited for her boss’s return, she felt her eyes starting to sting. Clutching the computer pad, she locked her knees.

“Welcome home, Mr. Stark.”

Pepper was so proud that her voice didn’t waver. She caught people moving a well-known crate toward the Rolls where Happy was already waiting to put it into the trunk.

“Is it just me or are we having a déjà vu moment?” Tony asked, still smiling. He peered closely at her. “You were crying again.”

“Tears of joy,” she repeated the same words she had said years ago.

“I’m sure they are.”

Tony still looked at he and Pepper didn’t break the contact. His smile softened.

“I’m fine.”

“Your condition didn’t sound fine.”

“It wasn’t,” Rhodey interrupted. He sounded definitely peeved.

Something had happened and Pepper was sure she would find out soon, either through Tony, Rhodey or even Hot Rod, who was just now rolling down the ramp.

“How about we take this somewhere more pleasant? Have you had lunch yet, Pepper?”

“No.”

“You in the mood for a burger?”

Definitely déjà vu.

“What happened to you, Tony?” Pepper asked quietly.

His smile widened. “The best ever. C’mon, I’ll invite you to a super saver menu. We can talk then. Rhodey? Want in?”

Rhodes grimaced. “Watch you stuff your face with grease? No thanks, Tony. I’ll see to it that your… equipment gets home safe.”

“Thanks, Rhodey.” Tony’s expression was suddenly serious.

Rhodes just nodded, then walked over to the Rolls. Happy drove off with him and the armor not much later.

Tony smiled at Pepper. “Ready for our date?”

“A super saver menu in a burger place is not a date.”

“I’m paying.”

“Still no date.”

Tony made an inviting gesture toward the R8. “I’ll even spring for dessert.”

Pepper smiled. “I’m not that cheap, Mr. Stark.”

“I never said so, Ms. Potts.”

She slid into the passenger seat and Tony closed the door. “Hello, Hot Rod.”

“Hello Pepper,” came the pleasant reply.

Tony had walked around the front and now got in on the driver’s side, grinning. “Here we go!”

And they shot away from the airfield.

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It had been inevitable for Tony that he had to talk to his new chairman of the board. John Keller hadn’t really pushed for an appointment; Pepper hadn’t made room for one either. Tony had walked into his office at Stark Towers and a minute later he found himself in the company of Keller.

“Optimus Prime already briefed me on what happened,” Keller simply said. “All I need to know is whether this influences Stark Industries operations or not.”

Tony poured himself a hideously expensive bourbon and raised his brows questioning at Keller, who waved him off.

“It influences nothing, John,” Stark then replied. “I’m back.”

“That I noticed.”

“What happened was unfortunate and not planned.”

“I hope not, though you seem to have a tendency to find trouble.” A fine smile played around Keller’s lips.

Tony smirked. “Trouble finds me.”

He emptied half the glass while checking his email account through Extremis. He found it cluttered with mails. Without breaking the conversation he pushed half of them into the spam folder, sent a large batch of the remaining ones to Pepper, and left three or four interesting ones on his server. One was about…

“… the Holland-Taki contract,” Keller said. “Mr. Holland will be here on time. His secretary called.”

“Is Pepper handing off assistant duties to you now?”

Keller smiled. “No, but I believe two people reminding you of an important appointment might get you there in time.”

Tony emptied the glass, checking the time. Still an hour left until then.

“Welcome to the club, John.”

Keller’s smile grew. “I doubt I qualify as a baby-sitter, Tony. Pepper, Happy, Jarvis and Hot Rod fill those shoes.”

Tony grimaced.

“I was just checking in. Let me know if anything… comes up. Prime mentioned your interest in the second Ghost-2 mission. Whatever you think of as an excuse for your absence, please let me know.”

“Well, I was thinking of something very mundane, like a vacation,” Tony replied off-handedly.

“As if the board would ever buy you going on vacation.”

“Hey, I did. Once. It was fun.”

“Until you came back three hours later, ripping your chief engineer a new one over the new VTOL engine. I heard that story, Tony. Your board was very… open about your behavior.”

“Great.” Tony shook his head. “But this time it will be a vacation. In space.” He grinned at the prospect. “Until then, day-to-day routine it is.”

“Whatever qualifies as routine in your book.” Keller walked toward the door. “Three o’clock, Tony. A minute late and I’ll find you and drag you there myself.”

“I never should have let Banachek bully me into this,” Stark muttered, but his eyes twinkled.

“You had no other choice. Given you other… hobbies… you need me.”

Only too true. Tony watched the former SecDef leave and leaned against his desk. He called up the contract for Holland and checked it, found nothing wrong, and filed it away once more. Extremis was very handy for that.

Forty-five minutes to pass.

Well, there were always the new armor designs. Those would keep him from boredom for sure.

 

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Tony had reluctantly agreed to let Ratchet scan him. It was mostly out of his own curiosity. Jarvis hadn’t been able to deep-scan through the armor and the new undergarment. Tony would have to change the whole set-up, maybe even copy an Autobot scanner for that, so Ratchet was the quicker and easier choice.

The medic had been very intrigued. He had had Tony go through the process of calling upon the P-Cells, then had poked and prodded the black-clad human. He had asked Tony to remove P-Cell skin from parts of his body, watching how much of a control the human had over the process. Then Tony had called the armor and the same had happened once more.

“I find it interesting that Extremis recognized the P-Cells, since they are not in the human blueprint your brain stores.”

“Extremis was never finished,” Tony reminded the Autobot.

“It might be the reason. The access you have to data streams keeps your brain at peak performance. I predict you might have problems in the future, Mr. Stark. The human brain wasn’t laid out for this.”

“Mine was altered.”

“It’s still organic.”

Tony shrugged. He would wait and see. “What problems?”

“Headaches after intense use. Possible hallucinations. Dreams you can’t explain.”

“The usual then,” Tony interrupted, sounding casual.

“Don’t overdo it, Tony,” Ratchet told him sternly. “This is all new, it’s still basically a prototype and no one knows what might happen.”

XXX XXX

That was one reason why Tony wanted Sam to keep testing the Extremis.

“No!” the technopath ground out.

“Sam, this isn’t just for fun. I need to know how I can defend myself,” Tony told him firmly.

For once he was totally serious. No fun, no teasing, no sarcasm. He needed this.

“How many technopaths run around and try to stop you?” the younger man challenged.

“That’s not the point.”

“It is! I’m the only technopath here and I’m not going to go all evil on you, Tony!”

“I talked to Ironhide. He said one of the Decepticons, a guy called Soundwave, is technopathic. Well, the Cybertronian equivalent of technopathic.”

“I’m not going to attack you because of something that might never happen!”

“Sam…”

“Soundwave isn’t a technopath!” Sam went on angrily. “He’s the Cybertronian version of a telepath. He’s not like me!”

Tony tilted his head a little. “How do you know?”

“I read his file.”

That got Sam raised eyebrows.

“I read a lot of files, okay? I want to know what I might have to face if the Cons come back,” the engineer growled.

“Listen, Sam, I’m not going to sue you if you knock me out, okay?” Tony repeated. “Please! You trained with Barricade, but that’s not an option for me.”

Sam looked tense, almost to the breaking point. Tony understood at least to a degree that he didn’t want to use his powers to hurt someone, especially since he had already knocked Tony out of the sky once. But Stark needed to know.

“Please?” he implored.

“We stop when I say so,” Sam replied, voice hard. “I’m not going to permanently debilitate you because you’re such a stubborn ass.”

Tony grinned. “Now you’re talking!”

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They had chosen the med lab for this. Mainly because Ratchet insisted that he keep an eye on both men. Tony called the armor, felt it log on and fill his senses. Sam looked tense and like he wanted nothing more than to leave. Bumblebee’s presence was no great surprise. Tony was still wondering just what was going on between those two, and he would ask when this was over, but for now he pushed the presence of the yellow mech out of his thoughts.

“Ready?” he asked Sam.

The younger man grimaced. “No. Let’s do it. Maybe I can shut you up by knocking you out.”

Tony grinned. “Give it your best shot.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I will.”

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The pain hit him like an eighteen-wheeler right between the eyes. Tony had no concept of up or down any more, he simply screamed, curling in on himself; the world around him seemed to rush by at the speed of light, a dizzying sensation that made him want to throw up.

Tony felt everything white out around him. There was a searing pain in his head, travelling down his spine, and he gasped. For a moment he felt absolutely nothing, then reality slammed back into him. The HUD was flashing warnings at him, there was a voice demanding to know if he was okay, and he wondered what had happened.

Memory returned and he rolled onto the side with a groan. His head pounded and his eyes swam with tears.

Damn!

Someone helped him sit up and he turned his head to meet the bright blue eyes of Will Lennox.

Blue?

And they glowed? Whoa!

The hand clasping his shoulder armor was colored a dark bronze and burned gold, some kind of runes flashing over it.

“Lennox?” he rasped.

Damn, he sounded bad.

“Yeah. Don’t ask.”

Tony accessed the Extremis and got another blow in the face. It was like touching a live wire.

“Fuck,” he breathed.

“What’s wrong?”

“Everything.” He undid the helmet manually and looked around for Sam.

The technopath was sitting on the ground, head in his hands, and Bumblebee was at his side. The optics were glowing brightly and he was stroking a finger over Sam’s back. It was such an intimate gesture, Tony briefly felt his chest constrict. He didn’t really have to ask any more. This was more than telling.

Sam had hit him so hard, Tony had literally seen stars. Everything else before that had been warm-up. Even trying to take out the suit had only resulted in fast-paced counteraction by the nanotubes. And then Sam had done something different and Tony had blacked out.  
He clambered to his feet, aided by Lennox, who still looked like a mix between the Allspark and a protoform human, and stumbled over to Sam. The armor felt alien and heavy. Extremis was partially off-line and needed to reboot or recover; whatever.

“You okay?” he asked Lennox, who still looked like a modern piece of art come to life.

“Yeah. This will fade.”

“What happened?”

“You did. You give off strange vibes.” Will grimaced.

Tony blinked, slightly baffled. Okay… so what the fuck…? He pushed the thought out of his head as he stood before Sam, looking at the stricken technopath.

“Hey,” Tony said roughly.

Sam looked up, dark eyes burning. There was a clear expression in those eyes and Tony smirked.

“Yeah, I know. Sorry. I didn’t think you could do that.”

“I told you I could take it out, Tony. Don’t make me do it again.”

Bumblebee was still caressing Sam’s back and his optics watched Stark suspiciously.

“I believe you. I doubt I could come up with a defense against that whammy. And don’t worry, the Extremis isn’t completely down.”

Because Sam had stopped. He could have done worse. Tony was sure of it and he knew that nothing could counter-act this. He had to live with it. At least the Extremis had proven to be an obstacle. It was one good thing so far.

“Sam…?”

Sam looked at him, pale as a sheet and definitely suffering a lot more than Tony was.

“Sorry. I mean it.”

“Yeah.”

Tony let the armor open and removed the gauntlet, holding out one hand. The black undergarment had receded. Sam looked at him with narrowed eyes, then finally took the hand.

“Never ask me again, Stark. Never.”

“Promise.”

Because he ached himself. He needed a Tylenol or something even stronger. And he wanted nothing more than to just lie down. Tony rose and swayed, the world starting to dance around him.

“Hell…” he groaned.

A large hand caught him as his knees wobbled and he collapsed. Ratchet was suddenly there, lifting him up on the table.

“Stay still,” the medic ordered sternly.

And then everything whited out once more.

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Tony sat in the private area that was mostly used by the human contingent of the Autobot base, clutching his coffee mug like a drowning man. He had refilled it once already and he wished for the caffeine to work. The man who had made the pot of coffee, a guy called Jones, had put enough roast into it to wake the dead. Since Tony felt very dead right now, he could only hope.

Damn, this had been bad. He had come to about an hour ago, after being out cold for almost the same amount of time, and the headache had been as bad as throughout his best drunken times. Only this time it hadn’t been the fault of too much alcohol. This had been a technopathic blow.

Extremis had recovered, but it reacted sluggishly. Every time he accessed it, his head started aching again. Jones had suggested food. Maybe what helped Sam would help him.

It hadn’t.

So Tony just suffered silently, eyes half closed, body aching, head pulsing with every heart beat.

Someone walked into the deserted room and he blinked his eyes open. Sam didn’t look much better, but at least he managed a coordinated walk. Tony had felt like a drunk, slightly disoriented, on his way here. And he had insisted he could be left alone. The way Jones had looked at him in the corridor and had shadowed him until he was here had shown Tony just how bad it must have looked.

“Tony?”

He squinted at Sam. “Hey.”

“You should take Ratchet’s advice and get some sleep.” He held up a hand. “And don’t tell me you’re fine. You’re quite obviously not.”

Tony sighed. “And you are?”

“My situation is different.”

“Because…?”

Sam settled down. He had faint lines of stress in his too pale face, too, but he didn’t look like he would keel over any moment now.

“I have an anchor.”

Tony frowned, then a slow smile spread over his lips. He might not be able to think as fast as he was used to, but this triggered something.

“Bumblebee.”

Sam nodded, only mildly surprised.

“I was wondering about that…”

The younger man sighed and leaned back into the couch. “Probably. It’s not what you think it is.”

“So you’re not having sex?”

Sam groaned. “No. Why does everyone think it’s sex right away?”

Tony chuckled. “Because it’s the most obvious conclusion.”

“Well, we’re not. Why do people think it’s even possible? I mean, look at the size difference and the fact Bee’s a robot and I’m human, and…”

“Mind-sex then?” Tony interrupted, sounding amused.

“Stark!”

He laughed, even though it aggravated his headache. “It is,” Tony teased.

“It doesn’t matter what it is. Bumblebee’s mind gets me back into shape after such a stunt. He’s… soothing.”

Tony grew more serious. “Must be something. It’s special, hm?” he asked, voice softer.

“It is.” Sam glanced at him, smiling. “I’m glad I have him.”

Tony could only agree. Right now he wished he had something to keep the Extremis from hurting so much. Or maybe it wasn’t the Extremis and just his head. It was hard to keep track of what was truly organic now and what was because of the Extremis.

“Good, hm?” Tony asked, voice still soft.

Sam gave him a hard look, then relaxed some more. “Yes.”

“All the better.” He massaged his temples.

“Get some sleep, Tony.”

It was a sound advice. It was a really, really good advice. Finally he nodded and rose, feeling dizzy. Damn.

Sam grabbed one elbow and gently steered him out of the common area and toward the guest quarters.

“I seem to attract baby-sitters,” Stark muttered.

“You need them.”

The bed looked very inviting, despite the bare room and all-too functional design. But Tony had slept in enough cots and military issue beds to not care any more. He collapsed onto the bed, toed off his shoes and flopped back. Sam smirked a little, then flipped off the lights.

Tony mumbled something and rolled onto the side. He was out no more than five minutes later.

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Sam walked back to his own place on base. It was a former storage building, large enough inside to allow Bumblebee to stay should his presence be needed. Right now the mech’s presence was in Sam’s mind only. He was wrapped gently around him and Sam enjoyed the closeness.

::You should take your own advice, Sam:: Bumblebee sent.

::I’m fine. Really fine::

Bumblebee had helped with that.

His partner drifted closer and Sam smiled, leaning into the presence. It was so easy to be close and it was so incredible to feel the strength of Bumblebee through their bond.

He entered the former storage area, flipped on the TV and lay back on the couch.

Bumblebee sent a hum of contentment. Sam echoed it. He closed his eyes and let his mind mesh with Bumblebee’s, all guards down.

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Hot Rod was back in his usual parking space. The silver skin was spotless, the metal cool to the touch, and he looked like all the other cars in Tony’s garage: an expensive sports car, a collector’s item. Tony had spoken very little with Hot Rod in the past days. They had come home from Stark’s latest little brush with death, then Tony had delved right back into company matters, interrupted by another visit to the Autobot base, and now…

Things were normal. As if Extremis had never happened.

But it had.

Tony was forever linked into the data streams and he didn’t know what it had been like before. This was perfect.

“You don’t have to stick around and guard me all the time,” Tony broke the comfortable silence between them. “I could always contact you in case someone tries to… oh, I don’t know… take another stab at me.”

“I’m here voluntarily, Tony,” Hot Rod said, sounding infinitely patient, like talking to a child who just wouldn’t learn.

“Not interested in hanging out with your pals?”

“We don’t have the same social dynamics humans have. We keep in touch.”

Tony studied the silver mech. –Okay. Just offering you a ticket out of here—

\--I wouldn’t need an excuse to leave—Hot Rod answered, smoothly using the uplink Tony had opened.

\--You’d just leave?”—

\--Does that surprise you?— Hot Rod asked, sounding amused.

“Well, a good, upstanding ‘bot like you…”

The mech laughed. “I’m no do-gooder, Tony. I have as many black marks as you.”

“Uh-huh.”

\--I’m staying. Get used to it—

\--No other choice— he answered with a grimace.

Tony kicked up his feet on the worktable and swirled a ridiculously expensive flavored, non-alcoholic drink in his glass. It was almost blasphemous. Well, he was drinking it out of a very cheap, blue glass he had gotten from the burger joint because of some offer or other. Pepper had wrinkled her nose at him, but she had taken hers home. It had been a red one.

Tony grinned to himself. Sometimes it was fun to go to a drive through. Lots of fun. Especially in the back of a Rolls or driving the R8, the Saleen or any other kind of fancy sports car. Yes, he got a kick out of that.

Emptying the glass, he set it down on the table. The last remaining ice cubes clinked softly. He gazed at his fingers and wriggled them a little, smiling more. Beneath the deceptively smooth human skin lay what Extremis had made of him.

So cool. So incredibly cool and more than he had ever hoped to get out of this.

Extremis had taken the P-Cells present in his body and made them into his undergarment when he put on the armor. The smooth structure of the new ‘skin’ was neither metal nor truly organic. It was what protoforms were made of. Additionally Tony had been overhauled; completely. His organs were brand-spanking-new. His liver showed no more signs of alcohol abuse, his heart was healthy, the shrapnel was gone, as were the scars he had received because of those injuries. Including the bullet wound. There was nothing wrong with him. Nothing at all. At least organically.

Jarvis had run a scan on him. The arc reactor was now very much shaped to blend in with his natural musculature and shape. It was still glowing an icy white-blue color, but now the connection was not to his heart, but to his whole body. Extremis was part of his nervous system, linked to it. So was the reactor. Tony had been endlessly amazed at the fine wiring, all nanotubes, running from the implant into his body. He couldn’t remove the reactor as such and he wondered, if it was damaged, would Extremis repair it. While he was an experimental person, he wasn’t keen on stabbing himself in the reactor.

His endurance had grown. He was stronger, he was healthier, he was faster. He also ate more. Pepper had remarked on it just this evening when they had shared a late dinner. Tony had always substituted solid food for liquids, but now he ate healthy portions, including dessert.

Super-Soldier, he thought, amusement spreading through him.

That triggered something else, something he hadn’t thought about ever since he had developed the Mark III. His eyes were drawn to a very specific project of his.

He remembered now where he had come across the Super-Soldier program before. It had been when he had worked another government contract as the chief developer. He had delivered the goods on time, had earned the company a very large amount of money, as well as four new contracts, and he had had access to the file of one Steve Rogers, code name Captain America.

It was out of this file that he had picked one specific thing: the shield.

The original had been lost with Rogers just before the end of World War II. No one knew where the body of the man was and how he had died, but the shield had been found, only to be lost again. The specifics of the construction were still on record and Tony had made it his private project. He had no idea why, but the idea of this being the only weapon of an otherwise mainly unarmed man had intrigued him. Rogers had been the pinnacle of human perfection. The perfect fighter. Trained in hand-to-hand combat, faster, stronger, more resilient, than any other human being could ever hope to be through normal training.

The serum had been lost with so many other things, but Maya Hansen had revived it in Extremis, just on a different level. Tony had taken to reconstructing the shield, trying out different designs, until he had made it a perfectly round one.

Perfect weight, perfect balance, perfect protection. Aside from maybe a blow from Iron Man, nothing could ever dent the shield. With the success of the P-Cells, he had tried to integrate them into the shield as well, but their requirement for energy to work made that impossible. He could hardly snap a few AA batteries into a hidden socket.

Tony ran a hand over the smooth surface. He had even given it the correct coloring. Red, white and blue. A star in the middle.

How patriotic.

He almost laughed out loud.

Captain America had been lost, but the idea of a national hero was still there. Maybe the world was waiting for the return of such a new superhero. Iron Man hardly filled those shoes.

Using the Extremis, Tony closed the file. It winked out of existence on the screens. The shield was still there.

Part of him wanted to get to know this man. Wanted to talk to him, wanted to listen to him. He had been the first superhero ever. He had been a mere human being and he had been altered. So much like Tony.

Just that he hadn’t been an arrogant bastard, a weapons dealer, a merchant of death.

Tony suppressed the flood of self-loathing and turned to his armor. He had a few changes to make there. He had to slim it down, take the Extremis into account, the fact that he himself was no part of the armor, stored part of it inside himself. It would take his mind off things.

At least for now.


End file.
